The eleventh studio album, the first since 2016, is another return to the youth of the group members, to the time when they defined their signature, which they gave an indisputable individuality with the abundant help of the color of the voice of the singing guitarist James Hetfield.
“I wouldn’t say that there was a purposeful leaning towards the times of our youth. I’m fifty-nine years old, I feel good and I have no need to try to pretend otherwise,” drummer Lars Ulrich said of the album’s energy in an interview with music magazine NME.com.
The author of the new lyrics is James Hetfield. It is evident in them how satisfied the band is with what it has achieved and what it is on stage. However, they also contain her doubts, troubles and eternal struggles.
“They are about our vulnerability and who we are. We’re always trying to figure it out. If you think as a young person that at some point you will be wiser, that you will discover the code of life, in my case it will definitely not happen. But with increasing age, answers to some questions can be found,” he added.
Foto: Blackened
Cover of Metallica’s 72 Seasons album.
Metallica used their musical and human wisdom on the new record. It’s not an easy album to listen to. The band piled on them a dozen heavy-duty compositions, the length of which is sometimes substantial. She also moved away from a more alternative concept of her music, it is again mainly thrash metal.
She never used shortcuts in her work, not even in the mentioned nineties, when she stepped into the mainstream backyard. This time, too, she says what she intended to say in the songs. It’s in the lyrics, even though he uses poetic license here and there, so they’re not half-hearted, in the singing lines, the footage, or the guitar solos. She always played like that, there was no reason to change her habits.
The title of the album 72 Seasons names the first eighteen years of life that shape our true and false selves. The record carries traditional rolling riffs and machine-gun drums, but Metallica did not close into its own musical garden on it. She looked around and behind herself and got a little inspired.
In the second track Shadows Follow, there is a chorus that seems to have been borrowed from some supreme rock band. However, her usual handwriting was not lost in this, she did not allow it to be stolen by the melodic progression. In fact, she didn’t even let him play properly. At the beginning of Screaming Suicide, the guitar part from Lynyrd Skynyrd is a bit reminiscent, the riff in Sleepwalk My Life Away is again the famous metallic Enter Sandman.
The album’s standout moment is You Must Burn!, a song with a rollicking dark character, a stylish guitar solo and bassist Roberto Trujillo’s backing vocals. Another key point is Crown of Barbed Wire, finely constructed, dynamic and promising for concert presentation.
The highlight of the record is the closing Inamorata. Over eleven minutes long, the composition has a crushing riff that spins around in it, but is not annoying, and a melodic chorus, quite simple, lightens the mood in an otherwise aggressive track. Pleasant is the lull in the middle, which for a few moments completely removes its weight, and then the song picks it up again under the fire of drums.
Over the years, Metallica has adopted a procedure that it likes to repeat in songs. However, each one on the new record is different. All riffs, solos and lyrics have their own emotions, which form solid particles in the big picture of the musical phenomenon Metallica.
| Metallica: 72 Seasons |
| Blackened, 77:10 |
