If you haven’t already heard the explosive sounds of Metallica reigning over Internet at the moment, the “Gods of Thrash Metal” are indeed back. With the release of uniquely crafted videos for each of their latest songs (they released one video every two hours over their YouTube channel, much to the excitement of fans world over in the early hours of the release date), the band has certainly found its way back to its cult sounds, and power playing.
With twin guitar sections, uninhibited lyrics, infused into their original aggressive music style, Metallica has mostly kicked in their supremacy over the entire heavy metal movement from the 90s, this time in slick 2016 fashion. Asides from the few paunchy, mundane tracks that should be silently ignored while listening to the 12 track set.
Here are our top 7 reasons why we laud the band’s latest efforts to bring to its audiences riveting, super sonic thrash metal sounds, in some of their most revered formats.
1. The new album reflects Metallica’s enormous musical journey
Right from the grizzly tribute to Motorhead (among their greatest influences) in their album via “Murder One”, to the glimmers of their legendary "Garage Inc” covers of Diamond Head and Blue Oyster Cult, in “Atlas! Rise”, Metallica’s latest album, effectively sketches their influences and most memorable sounds, across the new tracks. Even then, tracks like “Halo on Fire” are painfully slow (as you wait in vain right up till the 7th minute for the guitars to pick up), and bring ghastly memories of the band’s works from Reload. Thankfully, the earlier released track, “Moth to Flame” and even the destructive sounds of “Spit out the Bone”, take fans back to the days of “Kill “Em All”, and into the safety of their seemingly unwavering commitment towards heavier, signature electric sounds.
2. Return of Metallica’s signature aggression
Undoubtedly, one of biggest improvements over Death Magnetic (we won’t even mention the earlier works), is the return of the band’s cult aggressive style of song playing. And its just not in the case of the title track “Hardwired…to Self Destruct), but amply visible in the others as well, case in point “Spit out the Bone”. Even when the focus is possibly more on the awe-inspiring guitar riffs, in songs like “Now that we are Dead”, the band maintains the aggression through some seriously kick ass double bass drumming (Go Lars!).
3. Kirk Hammett is back with some magical guitar solos
The band’s loyalists have been waiting for this for a very long time. Suffering from the unfortunate lack of Hammett’s guitar work in the recent earlier albums, it is almost a blessing to have the man produce some truly magnificent solos in tracks like “Now that we are Dead” and “Murder One”. With shrieks of Joe Satriani and Jimi Hendrix inspired electric sounds, Kirk Hammett has announced a major comeback in his contributions of guitar solos that are creating magical conversations with the band’s listeners. In fact, some of the less inspiring, sleep inducing works of the album such as “Am I Savage”, are only worth listening because of Hammett’s twin guitar riffs, leading listeners to believe that these song structures were only created because he obviously didn’t want to stop playing (and so the others just ended up tagging along).
4. The obvious improvement in sound mixing inside the record studio
While this may only be relevant to studio albums (and may not matter as much to fans of Metallica live stage sounds), the precise record mixing and overall sound quality is another feather to the band’s cap. Metallica’s latest producer Rick Rubin has managed to improve capturing the band’s raw thrash metal spirit, in collaboration with Greg Fidelman, Rubin’s long time sound engineer, something that people wouldn’t have expected with the departure of their original producer of 25 years, Bob Rock (Rubin tried to bring the same out during Death Magnetic, but seems to have gotten it slightly better this time around).
5. We can finally ‘Head-Bang’ to Metallica once more
While Alice Cooper and Kiss made us love the Glam Rock movement, it was the loud, maniac sound of Metallica that made us love thrash metal, and got us to furiously head bang the entire establishment right out of our heads. Sincere fans had almost wielded hope of the return of the long lost head banging days, as Metallica went through scrupulous efforts to writing rock ballads (they didn’t even get that right during those times). However, with the band’s latest creation of tight, military riffs, as heard in “Confusion” (although, visibly slow in comparison to the band’s original speed of playing), such disappointments of earlier works have been effectively dismissed.
6. James Hetfield continues to write simply, yet sounds more powerful than ever
If one remembers the rage in Hetfield’s vocals during Garage Inc, then they are in for some pleasant surprises inside the latest album. Hetfield’s power packed vocals can be heard in conjunction with some high quality lyrical efforts in the tracks “Here Comes Revenge” and “Now that we are Dead”, a laudable effort to stand distinguished among the heavy instruments in the background.
7. There are actually 12 (!) videos to watch with the new release
For a band that was considered to be a sellout for creating a single music video for their song “One” as part of the “And Justice For All” album, releasing a set of 12 different videos is nothing short of monumental. If one can ignore a few simplistic, almost awkward (for 2016 at least) skull people, and ninja like warrior masters, fighting to get out of electric execution chairs, the concepts resonate the album’s messaging, and surreptitiously add to the entire song experience. The song “Here Comes Revenge”, has been shot to some fantastic, creepy-as-hell” animal animation theory, that could majestically rival any provocative yet secretive Kafka, Murakami prose.
All in all, “Hardwired…to Self-Destruct” aptly commemorates the genius of Metallica, and innovates without disturbing the original thrash metal spirit of the band. Surprisingly, the long song structures are not as prohibitive as once thought to be, possibly because of a laudable story telling effort by the band through each of their songs. We do however, secretly wish that the band wouldn’t have attempted to explore topic of self discovery via some really slow moving, lazy song structures, and stuck to the tighter riffs as heard in “Spit the Bone” and the title track, “Hardwired…to Self-Destruct”.
Top Picks: “Spit out the Bone”, “Now that we are Dead”, “Moth To Flame”, “Atlas! Rise”
Not So Great: “Am I Savage”, “Halo on Fire, Confusion”
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