A Great Reason to Be Alive . . .

Tonight at midnight! Yeah . . .

Here is the Rolling Stone Review . . .

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/22723926/review/22787142/death_magnetic

Quote :

Metallica





Death Magnetic








RS: 4of 5 Stars
Average User Rating: 4.5of 5 Stars





2008








In the Eighties, thrash metal wasn't a scene,
it was an arms race: riffs kept speeding up, drum kits got bigger. But
with 1991's Black Album, Metallica opted for unilateral disarmament,
slowing their tempos, shortening their songs and smelting their
chugging guitars and piston-powered drums into armor-plated pop hooks.
After that, the band rushed from one reinvention to another, starting
with the Southern-rock infusion of 1996's Load and culminating in the muddled, bizarrely produced group-therapy session of 2003's St. Anger. No longer: Death Magnetic is the musical equivalent of Russia's invasion of Georgia — a sudden act of aggression from a sleeping giant.

Just as U2 re-embraced their essential U2-ness post-Pop, this
album is Metallica becoming Metallica again — specifically, the epic,
speed-obsessed version from the band's template-setting trilogy of
mid-Eighties albums: Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning and, especially, the progged-out ...And Justice for All. That much is clear from the 90-second mark of Death Magnetic's first track, "That Was Just Your Life," where the band unleashes a barrage of James Hetfield's dutta-duh-duhnt
riffing and Lars Ulrich's octuple-time double-bass-and-snare smashing.
That long-vanished sound, as essential to Metallica as variations on
the "Start Me Up" riff are to the Stones, is all over the album —you
wonder how these fortysomething dudes are going to handle playing it
live night after night. (Enter chiropractor.)

Death Magnetic marks the group's split with producer Bob
Rock, who helmed every Metallica album from 1991 to 2004 and pushed
them toward concision and immediacy — until St. Anger, when he seemed to throw up his hands altogether. (As the 2004 documentary Some Kind of Monster
demonstrates, Rock deserved credit for getting any music at all out of
a band determined to self-destruct.) New producer Rick Rubin shoves
Metallica in the opposite direction: Half of Death Magnetic's
tracks are over seven minutes long, with song structures that are not
so much "verse/chorus/verse" as "long intro/heavy jam/verse/even
heavier jam/chorus/bridge/wild solo/outro."

This feels like the right move for an era where Guitar Hero is the
new rock radio. (Appropriately, the full album will be downloadable for
GH play.) And it's not as if Top 40 stations were going to slip in
Metallica between Chris Brown and the Jonas Brothers, anyway. These
songs rarely feel too long: At their best, they combine the melodic
smarts of Metallica's mature work with the fully armed-and-operational
battle power of their early days. "The End of the Line" is a
freight-train rocker with a ricocheting riff and lyrics about a doomed,
drug-addicted star. It builds to a frantic guitar duel between Kirk
Hammett and Hetfield, a wah-wah-crazed solo and, finally, a bridge that
feels like an entirely new song. And the spectacular "All Nightmare
Long" — a thematic sequel of sorts to "Enter Sandman" — combines
relentless Master of Puppets guitars with a Black Album-worthy chorus.

St. Anger was a misguided attempt to recapture the band's mojo by sounding "raw" — but Death Magnetic
manages to sound huge, polished and tough. The musicianship feels
thrillingly live throughout, and nimble new bassist Robert Trujillo
helps, even though he's mostly heard as a distant, ominous rumble. (Has
there ever been a more bass-averse band in rock?)

There's supposed to be a lyrical theme here — something about death
— but it's hard to discern. After expanding his lyrical palette on
previous albums, Hetfield is now so determined to re-metallize that he
pushes toward self-parody: "Venom of a life insane/Bites into your
fragile vein," he barks on "The Judas Kiss." The "One"-style
half-ballad, half-thrasher "The Day That Never Comes" appears to be yet
another tale from Hetfield's rough childhood, complete with the awful
pun "son shine."


But if you ignore the lyrics, Death Magnetic sounds more like
it's about coming back to life. Everything comes together on the
fan-favorite-to-be "Broken, Beat and Scarred," which manages to channel
the full force of Metallica behind a positive message: "What don't kill
ya make ya more strong," Hetfield sings, with enough power to make the
cliché feel fresh. The aphorism he paraphrases happens to come from
Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols, which is subtitled How to Philosophize With a Hammer. Metallica's philosophizing may get shaky — but long may that hammer strike.


BRIAN HIATT

(Posted: Sep 18, 2008)

http://www.metallica.com/index.asp?1=1&item=601231

Listen for yourself.



Cheers!

Ian

K!

i got death magnetic first thing this morning.
WOW. this is groovin' to say the least, i'm very impressed with everything thus far, aside from a song or two. love the new heavier feel, the drums are deffinitely there, but not over bearing, the riffage is super tight (as always) and i love james' style of vocals on this one.




good album.

"How can I be lost, if I've got nowhere to go?"

This is the question I've been trying to ask my whole life. To be exiled, one must first have a home. To be lost, there must be a starting point. What if there is none? Brilliant . . .

Cheers,

Ian

Im listening to it. Very nice. Thrashy goodness.

to me, enter sandman is a fitting title, because it puts me to sleep every time. and, that bob segar cover...well, that was an embarassment!

so far, "one" is the only new metallica i like (i know, it's not new!).

the first 3 albums, (i know i am not getting the order right); kill 'em all, ride the lightning, and master of puppets are the metallica i love!

so, how does the new metallica pare up with the older ones? has the singer grown his hair back out? please tell me he has! he looked so stupid with short hair!

hetfield DOES look dumb with the new do. and it's still short.

the new stuff is harder, faster, and better than most everything post-lightning.

IN MY OPINION.
that means noone's allowed to flame me.
haha