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The Metal Militia is back in business. Metallica`s ninth studio album “Death Magnetic” is the proof that they have found their way back to speedy thrash metal. Who would have thought this, after their hard rock and country attempts “Load” and “Reload”, as well as the raw and one-dimensional forerunner “St. Anger” in 2003? Nevertheless, “Death Magnetic” should be the desired turn to their thrash metal roots.
The album was released on September 12, 2008 through Warner Bros. Records and debuted as number one on the Billboard 200 in the United States. Outside of the U.S.A. they are distributed by Universal Music Group. No less a figure than the famous producer Rick Rubin accepted to work with the band. He displaced long-term producer Bob Rock, who acted as their producer since the excessively praised “Black Album” and even supported Metallica as bassist during the recording process of “St. Anger”. After they had finished recording “St. Anger” in 2003, Rob Trujillo was announced to be the band’s new bassist. Therefore “Death Magnetic” is the first Metallica record that features his bass tracks.
The rest of the band is still the classic line-up from 1983, consisting of the charismatic frontman and rhythm guitarist James Hetfield, drummer Lars Ulrich and lead-guitar-gunslinger Kirk Hammett. For the recording the band decided to work in different studios as well as their own studio HQ.
However, “Death Magnetic” features 10 tracks, including an instrumental. The album’s starter “That was just your Life” begins with the beating of a heart and atmospheric, clean guitars that lead into the first gallops and palm muted riffs that James Hetfield is famous for. The sound is raw, mighty and with a certain edge to it. Hetfield’s vocals sound like that of an angry sailor and are often interrupted by extended instrumental parts with dual-guitar lines. Fortunately, Ulrich’s drums sound like drums again and not like bush telegraphy, as on “St. Anger”. It is almost shocking to hear lead guitars and solos again, as Hammett was not allowed to do this on the forerunner. Concerning the lyrics, Hetfield surely does not sing about the happy days in life. The centre theme of the album is death and this is featured in all songs.
The intro of “Broken, Beat & Scarred” reminds a bit of the song “The Shortest Straw” from 1988, because of the staccato rhythmic. The track also contains a fiery guitar solo that starts with fast legato runs and ends in roaring double-stop bends. At this point, one has to say that the drumming of Lars Ulrich changed over the years. It seems that there is not as much use of the beloved double-bass as on the classic records. Hetfield’s “What don’t kill ya make ya more strong” lyrics make the whole thing kind of optimistic and motivating too.
Next in line is the song “The day that never comes”. This one is the first single on the record that was released separately. The video to this song aroused some attention, as it deals with the war in Iraq. Some fans recognized similarities to Metallica’s “Fade to black”, as “The day that never comes” starts with clean and atmospheric arpeggios with a melody line on top. The verses are soft and melodic whereas the chorus is loud and powerful. Therefore, this song takes the same line as “Welcome Home” or the mentioned “Fade to black” in terms of these dynamics.
“Crawl from the wreckage one more time…” is the first line of the album’s next song “All Nightmare Long”. What a fitting line for the beginning of Metallica’s new era, isn’t it? The song contains a lot of fast tremolo picking and gallops. In terms of the vocals, it seems that this song put a lot of stress onto Hetfield’s voice, as there are a lot of high-pitched notes to reach. All in all, it is fast and heavy and comes close to old-school thrash metal. Another specialty is the song “The Unforgiven III”. This song falls in line with “The Unforgiven” and “The Unforgiven II” – both on previous records. The song dynamics are changed around, so that there are heavy verses combined with a calm chorus. “The Unforgiven III” features piano arpeggios along with the typical clean, almost sterile sounding, guitars. As the song moves on, subtle strings come in and support the slow-moving vocals. “Suicide and Redemption” is the only instrumental on “Death Magnetic”. With almost 10 minutes of length, Metallica have met their standard from the old days in terms of quantity. On the quality side, this instrumental can not keep up with the ones on previous records. It sounds like a typical Metallica song, but there is the impression that the vocals are missing. There is no chance that “Suicide and Redemption” reaches the power and the groove of instrumentals like “Orion” or “Ktulu”. Death Magnetic’s grand finale is the song “My Apocalypse”. With a length of about 5 minutes it is the shortest track on the album.
In conclusion, Metallica achieved to awake their passion and love for speedy and heavy music. For the first time since the late 80s, the songs feature the typical complex structure and the raw charm of thrash metal from the Bay Area. Metallica went back from short, radio suitable tracks to the old-school metal sound. The band’s intention was to create songs that follow the line of their classics. In different words, they tried to copy themselves. As a consequence, the tracks on “Death Magnetic” do not feature a lot of variety and start to get old fairly quick. As mentioned, the sound is raw and not in any case over-produced. Here and there it seems that some parts are distorted and need a bit of re-mastering. One could see the reason for that in Rick Rubin’s unconventional style of producing, as he was not present at the studio very often.
Nevertheless, Metallica have made a step into the right direction and they have clarified that there is still life in the old dogs yet.

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“Death Magnetic” Overview

One of the most influential bands in music, ranked eighth on the list of the biggest-selling groups in history, Metallica unveils its ninth studio album, Death Magnetic. The band’s
first album in five years, Death Magnetic is also its first with renowned producer Rick Rubin (Danzig, Slayer, System Of A Down,
Slipknot), first with bassist Robert Trujillo, and first on Warner Bros. Heavy and thrashy, unafraid to embrace the band’s past yet move
into the future.

Customer Reviews

It’s about time! – Freth – Delaware, OH United States
Metallica finally returns back to some head banging music. After being fed riffs from a sippy cup for so long, this album is like drinking a large espresso. It’s a welcome change. Sure, it’s not a perfect album, but we’ve been through so much as fans that it’s just a relief to hear something resembling thrash out of Metallica again. The Black album was genius and it stands on its own, but afterward the band got stuck in this country/bluesy rut. James still sings a lot like he did on the Black album, which isn’t all that bad. Lars really breaks out of his shell and it doesn’t sound like he’s beating on a couple of buckets (I hate that sound) on this album. If you listen close you can hear some diversity in his playing. It was refreshing to hear Kirk do some solo work, but it’s nothing like the old albums. This isn’t a perfect album, but it seems like a reawakening of sorts, returning to roots. Is this Metallica’s transformation album back to thrash/technical metal? I hope so. A solid effort and some kickin’ music. Given all the angst we’ve had over the years, I feel some relief.

Was Impressed Until……………………. – Eric F. Grodsky –
I was listening to this album pretty heavy last year. Definitely was an improvement over the last few albums. Then I got a taste of Megadeth’s “Endgame”, and now I realize how average this album is. Metallica has gone commercial, and therefore has lost their reign. You wanna hear a mind blowing thrash album with great lyrics, get a copy of Endgame……………..nuff said.

A promising effort spoilt by the vocals – D-VOID –
Ok, I’ll admit I’ve never been the biggest Metallica fan in the world but there’s no denying songs like ‘Battery’, ‘Master’, ‘Seek and Destroy’, ‘Harvester’… I could go on listing. I even felt the Black album wasn’t too bad. It was heavy, sounded good sonically and had some good songs on it. It went bad for a number of years and then this….the promised return to their roots. The ‘comeback’ album if you will.
They really do try musically to recapture the classic sound without recycling old material and ideas and to some extent, they pull this off. Unfortunately Lars isn’t what he once was in the playing dept although he does put in a lot of effort. He’s always received stick for his drumming but for the most part I’ve always thought he’s been extremely creative and powered the band along both on and off stage.
The real weakness to this album isn’t even the production/ compression/ clipping etc. It’s Hetfield’s vocals. To me, the moment he opens his mouth and out comes that country style drawl introduced on ‘Load’ and present ever since, it’s unlistenable. WHY didn’t someone have the guts to tell him? In the same vein, some of the lyrics, repeated lines really grated on me. e.g. ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you more strong’… Couldn’t you be bothered to write a grammatically correct lyric?
In short, I wanted to like this album. Musically, it’s a definate step forwards, despite some lingering elements of last few albums but the vocals spoil the whole effort and despite repeated tries, I still can’t listen to it. Sad but True.

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