Metallica go back to core-values on their first album in six years.
Metallica
72 Seasons
****
Blackened Recordings. CD/DL/LP
“Full speed or nothing!” growls Metallica’s James Hetfield on Lux Æterna, a prime example of 72 Seasons’ astonishing vigour. Seventy four minutes-plus of bile, angst, relentlessly inventive riffage and battering ram at the castle door-drums, it’s Metallica with bells on, though not literally. Greg Fidelman’s Sensurround co-production places us at the forge, and several songs (Screaming Suicide; Sleepwalk My Life Away) end with band members approving the hot take they’ve just nailed. Elsewhere, Kirk Hammett’s wah-wah shredding on You Must Burn! is combustible, and Inamorata isn’t a love song, it’s Hetfield declaring “Misery, she loves me” while he and his bandmates come on like Sabbath doing Children Of The Revolution. ‘Biggest metal band in the world’ is a weighty mantle, but Metallica are worthy again. They’re relevant again, too, hence their recent New Yorker profile.
72 Seasons is out now via Blackened Recordings.
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