It's been a while since the Metallica boys have released an album and in Death Magnetic they have certainly come back with a vengeance. The album was released on 10th September 2008 and marks Metallica's Ninth Studio album and their first with new bassist Robert Trujillo. The album was well received by the fans and managed to reach #1 in both the U.S. and U.K. album charts.
The writing process for a good majority of the songs featured on this album was originally started around the time of the 'St. Anger' album being released. The band would play in jam sessions prior to live performances and record them for future use. Elements of these sessions would then be used in the final writing of the songs on this album.
Prior to the release of this album Metallica added a new song to their live set which was known only as "The New Song" which contained elements of two songs off of the new album "The End of The Line" and "All Nightmare Long"
As an added point this album was one of the first
albums to become available for download on for "Guitar Hero World Tour" game for all console formats.
The tracks included on the album are as follows:
1. "That Was Just Your Life" 7:08 Starting off with the sound of a heart-beating this song very quickly accelerates up to the pace and aggression that we have all come to expect from Metallica of days gone by. Overall a great beginning to the album.
2. "The End of the Line" 7:52 The pace slows down a bit for this track but certainly not the anger and raw power. This song sounds like it could be a track from "Kill 'em All" just with a much greater level of polishing and finishing off
3. "Broken, Beat & Scarred" 6.25 The pace of the album remains through this song. The guitar work is very complex in style with a great number of riff and speed changes through the song and usually within a short space of time within the song.
4. "The Day That Never Comes" 7.56 This song is similar in style to such classic Metallica tracks as "One" or "Welcome Home Sanitarium" where we start off with a very low key and slow beginning to the track with it slowly building up towards the end of the song.
5. "All Nightmare Long" 7:57 The pace is cranked straight back up to full blast with this track as Metallica get really down and dirty with this song.
6. "Cyanide" 6:39 This song has a brilliant open section to it with a real sort of funky style to it. It's also really good to hear the new bass player getting his bass heard on the song, something that we haven't heard since the late great Cliff Burton was playing with Metallica.
7. "The Unforgiven III" 7:46 Good god is that a piano I hear on a Metallica track there must be something wrong, despite being the song that I least like on the album this song makes a good addition to the ever growing collection of "Unforgiven" tracks
8. "The Judas Kiss" 8.01 My favourite song on the album, and what a song it is. It just has everything that I could want from a Metallica track. James sounding like his mad as hell, Kirk's guitar screaming like a demon through the solo, Lars beating the living daylights out of his drum-kit and Robert pounding that bass. In a word perfect.
9. "Suicide & Redemption" 9:56 The longest track on the album and it's so nice to see Metallica putting out an instrumental track on their albums again just like the old days. Personally I still prefer the instrumentals "Orion" and To Live is to Die" but this is a fine track none the less.
10. "My Apocalypse" 5:01 Finishing off the album with as much power and speed as it began this track makes a fantastic end to this first rate album.
The overall sound of the album is very much harking back to the sound of Metallica at the time of the" ...And Justice for All" album and the length of the songs really do remind me of their old stuff. Some of the tracks are over 7 minutes long which makes for a real epic style of album.
It is also a welcome return to hearing some fantastic soloing by the great Kirk Hammett which is something that their last album "St. Anger" definitely lacked.
The first single of the album is "The Day That Never Comes" is an absolutely brilliant song.
The style of this first single is very downbeat very much similar to the song "One" from the "And Justice For All" album in comparison to the rest of the album which plays at a much more up tempo pace.
My personal favourite on the album at the moment would have to be "The Judas Kiss" which has a real fast and aggressive style to it, which unfortunately in some of Metallica's albums lately they have been really lacking.
The album may not quite be "Master of Puppets" or "Ride the Lightening" but it is certainly a great addition to any ones collection and well worth the 5 year wait.
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The Metallica boys
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Advantages: Thundering riffs, great basslines, howling Hetfield, mental solos, brutal drumming Disadvantages: Still not as good as the old Metallica albums, Unforgiven is a bit odd
dan_the_turbanator 22.10.2008 (22.10.2008)
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Review of Death Magnetic - Metallica
Advantages: Metallica are back, fantastic partly-thrashing progressive riff based metal music with a contemporary touch Disadvantages: Awful mixing has destroyed dynamics adding severe digital distortion with too much compression used
Dec 4th, 2008
(Mar 23rd, 2009)
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