Brief Review of Death Magnetic

Here is a short review of DEATH MAGNETIC…the latest album released last Friday (12th Sept) by METALLICA.
Music wise it is only decent, there are parts where you really feel pumped up but more often than not its nothing more than just mediocre riffs. Maybe I have to let the songs grow on me. From an arrangement point of view it is a total back to roots album for metallica what with all the songs being long with changing riffs and solos. This might be great news to the I-hate-Metallica-after-Justice fans but I am not one of them. I think as awesome as their first four albums were, the radically different direction they took after Justice added an entirely new dimension to their music which paid off very well. I believe they tried to pull off a similar stunt with St.Anger which of course failed. However I personally give them the credit (that they deserve and normally don’t get) for having the balls to experiment rather than stick to just one proven formula.
Coming back to Death Magnetic, all the songs follow the template established by Kill Em All. The lyrics though suck balls. Hetfield was lyrically at his best during their softer years. Almost all songs from black album/load/reload have better lyrics than first 4 albums with a few exceptions of course. Most of the songs on death magnetic have to do with...(wait...can u guess?...) death...all seems very pretentious to me!
And one thing that has been a source of misery for me is Unforgiven 3, one of the songs on Death Magnetic. It is so crappy it makes me want to cry. Unforgiven 1 and 2 are masterpieces in every right of their own. Unforgiven 3 sounds like the result of a bad jam session from a third rate band or a song that I would come up at 2 am in the morning after coming back from the bar on a friday night completely drunk (the important difference being that I always have the good sense to realize it sucks...but not before a period of about 15minutes during which I am convinced that I have created a masterpiece!!)

Overall, I would rank the album maybe above reload and st.anger but still worse than rest of their stuff. I have listened to the album only a couple of times and will definitely be doing more listening in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully I will grow to like it even more (cuz all fancy critiques and opinions notwithstanding, wouldn’t you rather enjoy something than hate it?)

Another good thing is because of death magnetic I listened to most of MetallicA’s repertoire again and was reminded why they are one of the best bands to have made music!

In conclusion...obey your master...MASTER!