I Listened to the New Metallica Album So You Won’t Have to

Where has the time gone? It seems like just yesterday that our subpar, seldom viewed blog was raking in traffic and hate mail after publishing the infamous “Metallica Week” series upon the arrival of 2016’s Hardwired to Self Destruct album. Time makes fools of us all; in 2023 Metallica has hit the forty year mark of recorded musical history, this website has hit the ten year mark of being a festering diseased pimple on society’s ass that never amounted to anything, and I myself have become a grizzled mid-30-something with graying hair and less patience than ever before when it comes to reviewing new music. Of all the unlikely albums to release since Metallica’s last installment (I’m looking at you; Tool, Hum and Gang Starr), I couldn’t even be bothered to review an actual album unless it meant slaughtering a particularly terrible one in my not so beloved years’ end lists. But Metallica drives traffic around the internet like nobody’s business, my Metallica articles are still the only ones with over a thousand unique views, and so here upon the release of a new album I have returned. Hi, I’m not the nostalgia critic because I’m not a fucking predatory dweeb, but I did listen to the new Metallica album so you don’t have to. But before we get to that, it might be time to follow up my other Metallica week article “When the 2010’s Became the Decade of the Big Four… Again”, because the situation has been pretty dire all around for those that are still actually here.

I suppose we’ll start with Megadeth since they are literally the only band to release a new album out of the big four since Hardwired to Self Destruct’s release, and that album was just released in September of 2022 at that. Megadeth continued to be Metallica’s foil, and in this case actually managed to go nearly as long as Metallica between new albums for the first time ever. Over 6 and a half years came and went between 2016’s Dystopia and 2022’s The Sick, The Dying and The Dead, and that mostly falls upon two very notable things to happen to Megadeth. One was Dave Mustaine’s throat cancer, which as horrible as it was, is something Dave has sounded afflicted with for almost 30 years at this point. After he beat the cancer, Dave Ellefson decided to beat his meat while filming himself and the screen recordings were shared with the world for all to see. Needless to say, we gave him a year’s end worst-of article in his honor and he was swiftly booted from Megadeth once again, replaced on the album by Steve DiGiorgio and in concert by the returning James Lomenzo. Megadeth’s album finally surfaced last September and while it was a mediocre installment that comfortably slots toward the bottom of the back catalog, it wasn’t exactly a Risk, Supercollider or St. Anger either and songs like “We’ll Be Back” and “Dogs of Chernobyl” are about as Megadeth as they can possibly be in 2022 with a 62 year old, recently recovered from cancer Mustaine. In 2023 Marty Friedman rejoined Megadeth for the first time since 2000 to perform 3 classic cuts from his early 90’s peak era during a concert in Japan and fans rejoiced.

Slayer just flat out doesn’t even fucking exist anymore. Slayer made the bold move to announce a retirement tour in 2018 that lasted right up until 3 months before the pandemic forced everyone to retire from touring, with their final concert being performed on November 30, 2019 in Los Angeles. Slayer were always the heaviest of the big four, so being the first to bow out is only natural, and a lot of people would’ve argued Slayer died when Jeff Hanneman died back in 2013. Regardless, I still made the pilgrimage to their final tour when it came through town, boasting a heavy hitting lineup of Testament, Behemoth, Anthrax and Lamb of God. Other legs of the tour featured openers such as Cannibal Corpse, Ministry, Napalm Death, Phil Anselmo, Amon Amarth, Kreator and Primus. For the final time ever, Slayer sold out stadiums, arenas and amphitheaters in the US and worldwide, arguably going out with their most financially successful tour ever.

Anthrax has been wading in a strange state of limbo ever since the resumption of touring after the worst of the pandemic, despite embarking on a relatively successful 40th anniversary tour in 2022 which continued until February of this year. They are currently on year seven with no new music and this 40th anniversary tour featured less live performances than any tour they have embarked on since their struggling years (just 6 in 2008 and 4 in 1999, if anyone was wondering). However, a big reason for this is Scott Ian and Charlie Benante’s new extracurricular activities. In 2020, Scott joined a newly reunited Mr. Bungle along with Dave Lombardo, transforming Mike Patton’s once experimental, indecipherable band back into a thrashing metal monster with a focus on their pre self titled work. In 2023, Mr. Bungle will be touring for the first time since 2000 and I am all about it. Charlie Benante on the other hand has now been given the opportunity to cosplay as the late Vinnie Paul in the newly “reunited” “Pantera”. The scare quotes probably indicate enough about my feelings on this, and this isn’t the inevitable article where I throw my opinions around about that whole thing, but “Pantera” with Charlie will be opening for Metallica on the 72 Seasons stadium tour.

In 2020, Metallica were a trendsetter when they cancelled all of their 2020 tour dates in February. Not because of the pandemic, but because James Hetfield was returning to rehab. I’m not going to make fun of him for making that decision, his addiction problems were never the reason for making fun of St. Anger or Some Kind Of Monster. They tended to release some needless filler projects in the meantime like an acoustic version of “Blackened” nobody asked for and a streaming release of the S&M 2 concert that had a re-released song from St. Anger as it’s promotional single. 2021 marked the 30th anniversary of the black album, and so a massive 6 disc box set was issued along with The Metallica Blacklist. Blacklist consists of over four hours of artists you have never wished to hear cover Metallica doing every song from the black album, so much so that the entire first hour consists solely of “Enter Sandman” and “Sad But True” covers by Weezer, Ghost, St. Vincent and Jason Isbell among others. Again, things absolutely nobody asked for ever. Down the line, there’s another full hour of “Nothing Else Matters” covers ranging from Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan, My Morning Jacket, Phoebe Bridgers, Hootie and the Blowfish’s Hootie, and perhaps most notably Miley Cyrus. Metallica of course went on to perform the version with Miley Cyrus live, because they had to complete their trilogy of error that began with Lou Reed, continued with Lady Gaga, and had now reached it’s logical endgame. Unlike the time she and The Flaming Lips made an album longer than the new Metallica album together, reception from what I can only assume are not metal fans was generally positive. In 2022 they headlined Lollapalooza for the first time since 1996 on the Load tour, and James actually told the crowd to loudly cheer for “St. Anger” while claiming the album deserved a reevaluation. Things like this are also why Metallica will always be easy to clown on, they’re a bunch of 60 year olds who don’t give a single fuck and will deliberately go about things in ways designed to piss off their own fanbase. They’re in on the joke and are trolling all the way with it. Which of course, brings us to 2023’s new album, 72 Seasons.

Before we even get into the music of 72 Seasons, we of course first have to get into the artwork and album cover. As par for the course since the black album, the artwork and especially the album cover are terrible. How a band as big as Metallica has never had a single good album cover since fucking 1988 is beyond me. We’ve got a pile of burnt crap exploded all over the place, a burning crib, a big black M in the corner and a bright piss yellow all over everything that isn’t black. I sure hope this isn’t what the music is going to sound like. What’s especially irritating is this yellow and black color scheme reminds me of the Pittsburgh Steelers, a football team that is very much hated and despised by this website. That makes it even fucking worse. The album cardboard itself unfolds in a bunch of uncoordinated directions with pictures of the senior citizens in Metallica and more random burnt shit flung everywhere over piss yellow backgrounds. The booklet just kind of falls out and the CD itself finally buried under like 8 pages of this cardboard. This is fucking stupid. LULU might have had disfigured mannequins dressed as prostitutes all over it but the CD was quickly accessible so it could then be flung out of the window. I’ve never had a physical copy of Death Magnetic or Hardwired to Self Destruct but I can only assume those did not feature such excessive folds of cardboard to conceal the CD beneath either. The artwork and packaging sucks, 2/72. Yes we will be rating everything out of 72, because of fucking course we will.

The title track starts things off in what is quite predictably predictable for a band whose debut album came out forty years ago. “72 Seasons” starts right out of the gate with loud heavy riffing which has been done harder, better, faster and stronger at least 72 times in Metallica’s back catalog, but least they can still sound like this when they’re all a decade away from age 72. They’re making sure they start this album off with a song containing all the mandatory elements of a Metallica song at this point. It’s actually metal music, it’s actually thrashy sometimes, it has guitar solos and and it has hooks, and it’s also almost eight minutes long. Metallica cannot make a short song, this is just how it goes for most of these old metal geezers at this point and it’s one of the longest songs, though not by much so, on yet another album flexing a 77 minute length. This was the last new song released before the actual record came out and of those songs it was in the better half of them. I like it, but what makes this song 8 minutes long is the repetitive songwriting hallmark of any late era metal dinosaur these days. Listen to anything from the 2000’s and onward by Metallica, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath’s reunion/retirement album, Ozzy’s recent albums and most new albums from 80’s thrash bands and you’ll find plenty of examples. They can definitely still put together a good part, but they also have a tendency to linger on these parts repeatedly. I sure hope you like listening to James yell “Feeding on the wrath of man” because he says this at least 40 times throughout the song. I think it’s a fine song for a forty year old Metallica to put out, I like it for what it is but it’s just yet another installment in what we can safely call the Death Magnetic/Hardwired to Self Destruct/72 Seasons trilogy of Mehtallica. On Metallica’s also usually hilarious production front, this time around it actually doesn’t sound that bad. Lars is still noticeably louder than most drummers ever would be in any band in the mix, but other than that there isn’t much “loudness wars” shit going on in the mix that all of their post 90’s albums had been notorious for. I’ve been speaking a lot about 72 Seasons the album and “72 Seasons”, this first song interchangeably because it’s easier to talk about points like that when the self titled track is also the first track and a notable one. Listen to “72 Seasons” the song for a preview of the album, sure. I’ll give it a 52/72, which comes out to roughly 72/100 in non-Metallica math. Also there’s only four seasons guys, not goddamn 72 you weren’t even close, you’re getting senile in your old age.

“Shadows Follow” is more of the same as the last song as we start off with more hard riffs featuring both a Metallica rarity like properly mixed bass guitar and a Metallica staple like Lars’ basic and mediocre drumming. I can appreciate it for what it is, but nothing about this isn’t something Metallica’s already done before better. I enjoy the guitar work and the lockstep rhythm guitar in the verses the most here, Metallica can still excel in this department when they feel like it. The hook here is thankfully less repetitive and shorter than the previous song, but that doesn’t stop them from constantly returning to this part here either. As it pretty much went before with Death Magnetic and Hardwired to Self Destruct, I already know what I’m going to end up really doing here is talking about how Metallica make the same sort of safe, overly long dad thrash songs over and over again on their proper studio albums. I really don’t want to do this for 10 more songs after already going for two, it feels like I have 72 Seasons of typing to go onto from here. “Shadows Follow” is not a bad song at all, for a forty year deep Metallica it’s as Metallica as they can possibly be anymore. I will also give this one the 52/72 score and say like “72 Seasons”, I bet this entire album could be these songs over and over again and it probably will be from here.

“Screaming Suicide”, the music video of which is now the second video to ever be blocked from being linked due to sensitive content from our normally safe website, can’t be shown above. The first one was “Fucked With a Knife” by Cannibal Corpse. Well what this song immediately brings back to the Metallica table, LULU pun very much intended, is Kirk Hammett’s wah-wah pedal, extremely on full frontal display. It was something that has also been a big time element of Metallica for decades at this point but had thankfully remained fairly restrained so far in this album. This song has also already been done before and I liked it better when it was called “Cyanide” on Death Magnetic. You already made a song where you scream “suicide” in the chorus and this song even talks about drinking cyanide at one point. Come the fuck on dudes, if you’re going to plagiarize yourselves again at least stick to doing your glory days. The solos aren’t exactly anything worth putting more space into this for either. When this was released as the second preview song in January I was not exactly enthused about this one. Even in listening to the album this one is definitely a step down from the last two tracks and I can’t really recommend checking out this one. I give this a 33/72, it’s nothing special and actively annoying at it’s worst moments. Also for some reason there’s actually some random studio banter stuck in the end of this song and a couple others on the whole album. I guess Metallica can’t even be bothered to edit their takes right anymore.

Metallica should have just named their album “We like starting songs with the letter S” at this point. What the fuck is with the songs starting with S? Well this song starts off with the very rare audible bass again. On this album, Robert Trujillo actually got to write some of the music for more than one song, and Kirk Hammett didn’t lose his phone full of songwriting credits. Also on this album are some of those compulsory stadium ready straight ahead rock songs more reminiscent of The Black Album and 90’s Mehtallica, of which this is the first so far. If you ever heard “Now That We’re Dead” from the last album then you’ve basically already heard this song, both are 7 minutes long and take about two minutes to build up to a goofy and mediocre chorus that they repeat a ton. “Wake me”, uh oh Metallica’s “woke” now said 72,000,000 idiots that’ll still listen to “Enter Sandman” and like it. Metallica fucking sleepwalked their way through this fucking song for sure, and I am fucking sleepwalking my way through writing this. As I said, Metallica modus operandi on any canon studio album since St. Anger has been to make the safest nostalgia fuel for their good old days of over thirty years ago at this point. Some draws more from thrash like “72 Seasons” or “Shadows Follow”, some draws more from The Black Album like this one. I give it 42/72, it is slightly more enjoyable than the last song but it is still just not fun writing about at all.

“You Must Burn!” sure is really lackluster when it comes to the title being dropped, with the exclamation point you’d think it’d be something Hetfield hilariously yells ala “Frantic tick tick tick tick TICK TOCK!” or “I AM THE TABLE!”. Nope, he just kinda yarls it out in a rather nondescript ending to another boring hook repeated far too much. In fact, this song actually seems to dare draw a lot from the Load and Reload cycle of Metallica for the most part. ThreeLoad is something absolutely nobody was asking for, and they have had other moments like this such as “The Unforgiven III” and “ManUnkind” over the years. I kind of liked the solo section though, it actually gave a different feel from the extremely boring and snooze inducing main content of this song. You know it’s rough when Kirk’s wah wah pedal is actually one of the better parts going on here. It is also another 7 minute long song, unsurprisingly outwearing it’s welcome. I’ll give this one a 40/72 for being the exact same thing as the last song. It didn’t start with the letter S but it had a wildly misplaced exclamation point instead so it gets docked a point for bad grammar.

“Lux Aeterna”, I’m not fucking typing that thing for this or for the Tool album, was the first song to be released from 72 Seasons way back in November of 2022. Just like “Hardwired” was the first release from that album, also surprisingly released with little to no prior hype generation or preliminary campaign, the song of course immediately garnered tons of attention. Just like last time around when Metallica released a new album, they released the shortest, heaviest, most thrashy 80’s metal sounding song as the first single to generate the most hype they possibly could. There is also as usual only one song like this on the entire 77 minute long album somehow. I feel like Metallica could probably benefit to release more than just one song in this style per album in their post St. Anger recovery years because it is what they actually excel at now compared to the 7 to 10 minute long lumbering mammoths they typically deal in. This is probably the best song on the album if you ask me, it’s the sort to make you enjoy and appreciate that Metallica are still around in this day and age. It’s of the same cut as “We’ll Be Back” by Megadeth for the only comparison left in their peer group anymore. First to start last to fall, so it goes. I will give “Lux Aeterna” the highest score I will give a song from this album, 54/72, a clean 75% in non Metallica math.

“Crown of Barbed Wire” on the other hand just kinda lumbers on and on and on in the most repetitive nature yet, even for this fucking album. Of all the songs so far, this one is the most simple and repetitive yet. A lot of the guitar work reminds me of things like “Ain’t My Bitch”, “2×4” and “King Nothing” from the Load era and that is just an immediate negative. It kind of gets to an almost St. Anger-istic repetition after a while. This really, really did not need 6 minutes and thus far this is most boring shit I’ve heard yet. I’m not even bothering with spending more time on this song. I give it a 22/72, this one kind of sucks.

“Chasing Light” starts out with “THERE’S NO LIGHT!”, more lumbering bass, wah wah pedal guitars, and picking up of the pace before settling into a big boring groove metal verse. This one is pretty much just doing what “72 Seasons” and “Shadows Follow” already did better earlier if you ask me. “Without darkness there’s no light”, there it is. There is your meme fucking lyric of the album. This one is actually a bit more annoying in the hook, instead of “lean on me when you’re not strong” we get “end it all, lean on me” among a hundred other things before “lean on me”. The guitar solo here is some of the most hilarious fast but banal and simple as shit stuff ever. There are children out there playing better solos than Kirk Hammett in this song. It is also nearly 7 minutes long. Fucking hell, please make it stop already. I give this a 32/72, I’m bored.

And it is now time for what was my least favorite of the songs released before the album, the tribute to the late Charlie Murphy, “If Darkness Had a Son”. Now in the context and track placement of the album, it is not doing itself any favors either. This is basically just like the last fucking song all over again only worse. The “TEMPTATION!1!” part reminds me of that crappy St. Anger era demo they played in the Some Kind of Monster documentary. It’s yet another 7 minute long song that sticks around way longer than it needs to, and with this and “Chasing Light” in a row, it really just slows the pacing of the record down to a crawl. It’s hard to be enthusiastic with this 15 minute block of boring, slow, lumbering Mehtallica slogging along here. The title being sung is just barely outdone by “without darkness there’s no light” for unintentional lyrical hilarity on this album. The solo section is fine, it at least injects a little life into this unremarkable gray scale of a song even if it’s nothing out of the ordinary for Kirk Hammett in 2023. This was probably one of the worst songs they could have possibly used as a preview for the album, as it does nothing but highlight all the things people complain about when it comes to modern day Mehtallica songs. I give it a 30/72, these songs which have followed “Lux Aeterna” on the album are just so boring, too long and completely unengaging.

Oh my god what is this? A song that’s only four and a half minutes long? Thank fuck for that, finally another track that doesn’t overstay it’s welcome and repeat endlessly for three more minutes than it needed to. “Too Far Gone?” is probably a better question to ask about any of the last three songs, because yes they did go on for far too long. This one is pretty blatant in it’s emulation of their thrashier days, the riff is cool even if it sounds a bit like “The Four Horsemen” in reverse at times. James yelling “I, I” at the beginning of the verses is kind of funny, bit of a Disturbed-esque howler monkey vocalization moment there. It’s nothing groundbreaking and it’s not going to stop you in your tracks and command your attention, but after the last several songs this album needed a change of pace. The guitar is adequately shreddy at times, particularly after the hook, but even for a short song this one still manages to repeat the same parts over and over again. At least they didn’t play the entire song a second time to pad out the length. “Too Far Gone?” gets a 42/72, it’s better than the last few songs but that really isn’t saying a whole lot either.

“Room of Mirrors” continues to keep the tempo up and the song length down, at least in terms of this album’s standards. Very rhythmic, very fast paced verses, very wah wah pedal happy guitar parts. Sticks to the tried and true Metallica formula of finding a midpoint between the thrash and groove metal. By this point if you’re still listening to this album you’re just going to fucking listen to the whole thing anyway. I liked this song, I’ll give it a 43/72. Then I saw that the last song on the album, “Inamorata”, was the longest song Metallica had ever recorded, 12 minutes long. Well like I said, I’m already this invested in finishing the whole album even when I could simply put something like Ride the Lightning or Master of Puppets on instead and hear 8 minute long songs that aren’t boring instead.

If you only listened to the first 10 seconds of “Inamorata”, you could reasonably believe you were listening to sludge metal. They are really going to drag this one out and you can just tell from listening to the first 10 seconds. One minute in and it finally changes to something else, but that something else also happens to be Metallica sounding straight out of the more dragging cuts from the Load and ReLoad cycle. This one has the same slow swagger and directionless clock running of stuff like “The Outlaw Torn” or “FiXXXer” which were also coincidentally the last and longest songs on both of the Load albums. It is a different thing for Metallica to throw back to, I don’t think anyone out there was really demanding ThreeLoad anytime soon either though. I know I certainly wasn’t. Much like how “Screaming Suicide” deliberately had the same chorus as “Cyanide”, this song has the exact same chorus as “My Friend of Misery”. I will certainly take “My Friend of Misery” over this song any time, it accomplished everything this song attempts to with much better results. Halfway through this song, Metallica is bringing back the fucking post grunge guitars of crap like “Hero of the Day” before launching into an actually nice solo section bringing back some surprisingly classic tone. This song is an overly long mess that tries a lot of different stuff over it’s sprawling length, but it also repeats a lot of these parts in an expected fashion. Mixing the Death Magnetic/Hardwired style with Load/ReLoad wasn’t something I particularly needed from Metallica in 2023, but it was something they would inevitably attempt to do anyway. No one was going to stop them, and no one was going to stop them from making this song and album way too long. Every album by Metallica since Load has been at least 75 minutes long, 72 Seasons couldn’t even do the courtesy of finishing at 72 minutes and went on for 77. But hey, at least it was a whole 30 seconds shorter than Hardwired to Self Destruct. The album ends with James and Lars talking and clapping, because they can’t even properly record the ending to an album correctly anymore. “Inamorata” gets a 35/72.

My favorite new Metallica album I heard this weekend was definitely Master of Puppets performed in a rendition in the style of the soundtrack to the 1996 Playstation video game Crash Bandicoot. But the second best new Metallica album I listened to this weekend was 72 Seasons. 72 Seasons is the sound of growing old, babbling incoherently, and of brain cells shattering as dementia begins to settle within the brain. Metallica is doing nothing new or exciting, but nobody was expecting them to anyway. That a band like this exists 40 years later is living proof of time’s flat and circular nature, their career midpoint is now the 20 years old St. Anger era for fuck’s sake. This album completes the trilogy of Mehtallica that began with Death Magnetic and continued with Hardwired to Self Destruct, but it also fairly confidently earns a place ranked below those and above the Load/ReLoad cycle in the overall Metallica pantheon. Nu-Tallica songs like “All Nightmare Long” or “Spit Out the Bone” are better than anything on 72 Seasons, but I’ll still gladly take these at their most boring over another St. Anger or even another ReLoad for that matter. So let’s recap:

Album artwork/packaging: 2/72, probably the worst album art and packaging yet for Metallica

Track ranking best to worst (all scores out of 72): Lux Aeterna (54), 72 Seasons (52), Shadows Follow (52), Room of Mirrors (43), Too Far Gone? (42), Sleepwalk My Life Away (42), You Must Burn! (40), Inamorata (35), Screaming Suicide (33), Chasing Light (32), If Darkness Had a Son (30), Crown of Barbed Wire (22)

Average song rating: 39.75/72

In Metallica math and scoring metrics, 72 Seasons is officially rated 40/72. For those of us using real numbers, that is equivalent to a 55/100. Not very good, but still far from the worst thing Metallica’s ever done. And trust me, there are a lot of them. As I’d said, I would rank this one comfortably below DM or Hardwired, but still quite a bit above Load, RELoad or St. Anger. Metallica’s draw hasn’t been new music for decades and nothing in any of these 72 seasons is going to change that one bit.