When you have a brother who is seven-year older, you listen to some unusual stuff. While my class-mates were interested in stupid pop songs of the era, I was listening to Pink Floyd, Queen, Nirvana and of course Metallica. I was 8 or 9 years old when I first heard Metallica and loved their music since. Death Magnetic is their 9th studio album and the best among last few.
They had problems with Jason Newsted for a long time, he was a decent bass player but his parts were either cut out or volumed down during mastering. I think James didn't liked this guy at all and Jason stormed off. They recorded the dreadful St. Anger without a bassist, with producer Bob Rock in charge of the instrument. Metallica did not produce a proper album since the legendary self-titled black album. They "Load"ed, they failed, they "Re-Load"ed, they failed again. They screamed their "St. Anger" and the fans were quite sure, a legend has come to an end. They signed Robert Trujillo as the bassist which did not cheer the fans either. Most people believed they were becoming their own tribute band.
James Hetfield and his friends did a proper job this time, they decided to work with Rick Rubin as the producer. He produced Slayer and Audioslave albums before, and he knows the recipe. James was in charge of the band since day one, he pushed himself to the edge this time. His vocals are perfect, riffs are catchy. Lars destroyed the drum kit into pieces. His drums were also good in "St. Anger" but there was nothing else to back him up. I think the drums in this album are at "... And Justice for All" level. Kirk is a bit of a let down of this album, he has a few good solos but instead of going for melodic solos like in the past, he fell in love with the wah pedal. Rob has done a great job with the bass. This is the first album that we hear proper bass since "Master of Puppets". Here's a video released before the album, shows Rob's skills with an acoustic guitar during one of recording sessions.
This is their longest "proper" studio album, it's 74 minutes long and the shortest song is the last one "My Apocalypse" at 5:01. Metallica usually had long songs, "...And Justice for All" had 9 songs, "Master of Puppets" had only 8. This one has 10 songs and despite a few, they are very good ones. "The Day That Never Comes" was released as the first single before the album which I think was a perfect choise. It's a song with proper Metallica sound and changing tempo, which is something we haven't heard from them in the last decade. James has perfect melodic vocals in "Broken, Beat & Scarred" and my favourite "All Nightmare Long". We also have a new unforgiven in this album the "Unforgiven III". I wonder how much unforgivens they have in store for us. It has a piano intro, it's 7:46 long and has a rather slow tempo. This time we don't have "What I've felt, what I've known" lyrics, in fact it doesn't even resemble the first two unforgivens. The album overall has a complete sound. It's seems long but it isn't. You get easily involved with it and never get bored after all, we all missed them so much.
I believe this is the album that all Metallica fans were waiting for since '91. All the world knows they are not super talented musicians. What made them popular was their ability to compose melodic songs. They don't need to prove themselves. They are already legends and I think with this album they realized what they should do. Write good, melodic songs.
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