Death Magnetic / Metallica (2008)

1. That Was Just Your Life

2. The End of the Line

3. Broken, Beat & Scarred

4. The Day That Never Comes

5. All Nightmare Long

6. Cyanide

7. The Unforgiven III

8. The Judas Kiss

9. Suicide & Redemption

10. My Apocalypse

 

This is a strong, solid, and well-composed Metallica album. Even though I liked the aggressive direction of "St. Anger", it was not comparable to their classic catalogues. The composition and arrangement of this album is well-done. Metallica showed the world that they still could write awesome metal songs.

 

However, the first thing that caught my attention was the sound production. It sounded really oppressed and bothered me as I went trough the entire album, so it took me a while to pay attention to what was really going on in each song.

 

I don't call this album "thrash metal" even though most riffs are very aggressive and fast. I hear some riffs that are comparable to their 80's era, some that are influenced by more recent music, and some that sound like 70's hard rock.

 

One of the best thing that I liked about this album is that they put songs in order that they used in 80's. I am pretty sure they did on purpose. Track 4 was another surprise for me. It is a ballad that is relevant to songs such as "Fade to Black" and "Welcome Home".

 

I would love to give 5 stars, but the sound production bothers me every time I listen to this...

 

☆☆☆☆

St. Anger / Metallica (2003)

1. Frantic

2. St. Anger

3. Some Kin of Monster

4. Dirty Window

5. Invisible Kid

6. My World

7. Shoot Me Again

8. Sweet Amber

9. The Unnamed Feeling

10. Purify

11. All Within My Hands

 





When I heard the rumor that Metallica's next album would be fast and aggressive, I was really excited. I was not a big fan of "Load" and "ReLoard". Even though I admit the quality of the songs in those two albums, that was not really what I expected from this band, so I was hoping that they had gone back to their roots.

 

My first reaction of this album was like, ".....OK. I need to figure out what is happening." It was way beyond what I was expected. In fact, it was not anything like their past albums. Yes, it was fast and aggressive, but the sound production was really raw, guitars were down-tuned, songs were long and comlicated in different way from "Justice", and surprisingly all of the songs did not have Kirk's guitar solo!!

 

They mentioned in interviews that they had jammed to compose each song instead of James and Lars writing most as they had done in the past. Yes, I could see that. In fact, it almost sounded like they were still jamming and not going through arrangement process.

 

This album was a controversial and arguable piece. I saw a lot of negative reviews on internet. I can understand their opinions and agree most of the parts. However, I still admit the fact that I was very happy that they had played songs with aggression and power.

 

☆☆☆☆