Death Magnetic

Late Friday evening, I bought Metallica’s latest record, Death Magnetic. The press for this album has called it a return to Metallica’s thrash roots and, more importantly, the best album the band has released since the Black Album.

I haven’t listened to Metallica with any real frequency since late high school or early college. It’s not that I stopped liking their music so much as it lost its relevance to me as I grew out of my angst-ridden-teenage-boy phase. Still, all the press surrounding this new record had my interest piqued, so I thought I’d buy it and see what all the commotion was about.

Having listened through the album several times now, all I can say is “Wow.” This is a hugely significant record. It’s hard to think of another band that has regressed stylistically like this, and I don’t mean that in a negative way. The album is aggressive, fast, and heavy, probably their fastest, heaviest record ever. Unlike St. Anger, it’s well-produced and well-performed. In fact, one of best parts of listening to Death Magnetic is that we get to hear what a fast, heavy Metallica record sounds like with modern production; I keep thinking that this is what …And Justice For All could have been. And—this is the amazing bit—the songs are actually really good… for heavy metal anyway.

If you have ever been a Metallica fan, you should give Death Magnetic a listen. It really does live up to the hype. I don’t know how long I’ll continue listening to it—I’m well past my heavy metal years—but it’s easily the best heavy metal record I’ve heard in the last ten years.

Aside: Unlike most Metallica fans, I really liked Load and felt like it was a high-point for the band from a songwriting perspective. That said, strong songwriting isn’t as highly regarded in heavy metal as heaviness, aggressiveness, and speed. By those metrics, Load is definitely weaker than Metallica’s older records. Death Magnetic is not.