Loving 'Death Magnetic'

I've been listening to Metallica's 'Death Magnetic' for a while already (especially considering that six songs were available last week and the whole album since the 11th) and the truth is that I'm impressed.

This album is neither perfect nor a travel back in time, instead it offers another turn in Metallica's always evolving musical landscape. Here Metallica seems to channel some of the fury and aggressiveness of ...And Justice For All with the pop melodic sensitivities of the Black Album.

This endeavor doesn't work 100% of the time (I'm looking at you 'Cyanide' and 'My Apocalypse') but when it does, it's great. My favorites so far are 'Broken, Beat & Scarred' -which fits perfectly next to any AJFA song- , 'All Nightmare Long' -with the most infectious chorus this side of the 'Enter Sandman'- and oddly enough, 'The Day that Never Comes'. Besides these big stand-outs, there are a bunch of other tunes I like a lot: 'That Was Just Your Life', 'Judas Kiss', 'The End of the Line' and (gasp!) 'The Unforgiven III' (yes, I must be the only person on the Internet that likes this song).

There is a piece of this experiment that has been semi-neglected by most of the press and it's that Metallica has finally learned from some of their mistakes by letting the fans listen to the whole album for free from their site. I applaud this idea and I hope more bands do something like this in the future (just yesterday I was able to do a virtual listening party with my brother -in Venezuela- using this feature!)

Among the few things that keep this album from being perfect, the two to come to the front -in my opinion- are:

1) The mix: talk whatever you want about Bob Rock but you can't deny that -with the exception of St. Anger- he helped Metallica sound great (don't believe me? go, play 'The Black Album' and then come back). Where was Rick Rubin when this album was being mixed and mastered? Judging by the videos from MissionMetallica he wasn't anywhere near the recording studio. This whole "loudness war" is driving me insane, these songs are too good to sound this bad. Sometimes the drums are too loud ('The Day that Never Comes') or the voice is not loud enough.

2) Whatever happened to AJFA's drummer? Almost every other member of the band seems to be coming back in shape. Kirk solos -although not always epic- give most of the songs a newfound sense of melody while providing the second instrumental voice that was so prominent in Metallica's earlier efforts. Don't get me wrong, Lars is playing better than in the last couple of albums (just listen to the brilliance of 'Broken, Beat and Scarred'), but sometimes I wish he would find his double bass more often. 'When I listen to 'The Day that Never Comes' I can' stop thinking about how 'flat' the drum fills are through most of the song. '...And Justice for All' showed the world how amazing a metal drummer can be, and maybe the problem is that the bar was raised too high by that album.

All and all this is a great record, probably one of the top 3 of the year and for sure the best album Metallica has done since their self-titled effort. I've always been a proud fan of Metallica (I even like St. Anger!) and albums like this definitely make it easy to fight the naysayers.

'Death Magnetic' Final Score: 9 bleeding skulls/10