Metallica
Garage Inc. (disc 1: New Recordings '98)

THE REVIEW

It's 1998, Metallica has just released the double effort Load & Reload, and according to critics, they've hit rock bottom. Thus, a cover album, Garage Inc, is released, in my opinion their best album since 1991, including Death Magnetic, a double album but the second CD doesn't hold a candle to the first.

It opens with the screaming "Free Speech For The Dumb," a cover of Discharge, that almost takes us back to the Black Album era, continuing with "It's Electric" by Diamond Head  and a wonderful "Sabba Cadabra" by Sabbath, much more powerful and captivating than the original. Then we have "Turn The Page," a cover of Bob Seger, a very peculiar choice that follows the style taken in Load but works perfectly, far surpassing the original. The emotion Hetfield puts into this song makes it one of the most beautiful on the album, and it shows us that even if Metallica no longer plays metal (and rightly so, as they are no longer capable), they can still do something good, which they will also demonstrate in S&M, the pinnacle of James's vocals.

Track 5 is a Misfits reinterpretation, "Die, die my darling," also much better than the bland original version, featuring a great Hetfield growling "Just shut your pretty mouth!" with venom. For "Loverman," a cover of Nick Cave, it's almost the same as "Turn The Page," even though the result is significantly lower, with the song being too long and even boring at times.

Then it shocks the tracklist with a Mercyful Fate medley, a tribute to Black Metal, with a very good result that reaches the same levels of original violence. The following song is "Astronomy" by Blue Oyster Cult, neither praiseworthy nor disgraceful.

Track 9, "Whiskey in the Jar," a cover of Thin Lizzy and an Irish folk song, pours great energy onto the listener. One of the highest points of the album.

"Tuesday's Gone" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hetfield's first album as a child (it seems James takes great pleasure in tormenting people with stories of his childhood..) is the worst track on the album, at times pathetic and whiny, even though it was recorded with a lot of special guests (San Jose, Sean Kinnery, Jerry Cantrell, Pepper Keenan, Jim Martin, and Gary Rossington of Lynyrd Skynyrd). It all concludes with "The More I See," again by Discharge, a vicious track based on a single riff and a single verse.

In conclusion, Garage Inc. is a good album although certainly not a masterpiece but it takes us back to the origins of Metallica, when they were four kids having fun covering their idols and is enhanced by a vocally grandiose James Hetfield, whom we won't see again starting from St Anger.