Metallica, 72 Seasons ★★★★☆
The 11th Metallica album starts as it means to go on. Indeed, it starts as every Metallica album ever made has gone on, in a blitzkrieg of thunderous drums, snarling guitars, gnarly bass and barking vocals. The title track, 72 Seasons, features singer, lyricist and rhythm guitarist James Hetfield roaring about the “wrath of man” in a car crash of negative impact buzz words including “traumatic / dogmatic / volcanic / psychotic / erratic / chaotic / fanatic / narcotic / barbaric / stigmatic / demonic / hypnotic,” while his three band mates conjure up a maelstrom of high tempo heavy metal fury for seven minutes and 39 seconds. Pause. And then we are off again for six minutes 12 seconds of Shadow Follow, featuring more throaty roaring (about nightmares, wolves and other bad stuff), furious guitar churning, bass gurning and drums rattling off barrages of cannon fire.
Lars Ulrich is the heart of Metallica, a refined, articulate, 59-year-old Danish-American fine art collector who likes to hit his drums so hard they sure as hell know they have been hit. The sound of his kit is fantastically clean and precise, and the rest of Metallica lock tight to it. The sensation is of a band playing in sync, but without syncopation. Ulrich, Hetfield and bassist Robert Trujillo are the rhythm section with no rhythm, delivering mighty blow after blow in a form of unison aggression that jettisons anything as nuanced as swing or groove. Only guitarist Kirk Hammett occasionally breaks rank, firing off machine gun solos at the highest velocity humanly possible. Every song builds to a furious climax … and then restarts and charges ahead for several more minutes and several more climaxes. There are 12 tracks on 72 Seasons, with a running time of over 77 minutes. Metallica don’t know when to stop, which, I suppose, is part of what has kept them at the top of their game for so long.
It has been 40 years since 1983 debut, Kill ‘Em All, during which Metallica have not so much evolved as refined their fearsome sound, parsing and sharpening it into an ever more effective sonic battering ram. All pop forms have tropes that can make songs sound indistinguishable to the uninitiated but even within the heavy metal genre, Metallica are more tightly stratified than most.
Almost every song they have ever recorded is in the key of E minor, presumably optimised for Hetfield’s favoured tone of stentorian rage. There is a surprising moment, six minutes into Inamorata (the title’s object of adoration being defined as “Misery”, in case you thought Metallica were getting soft) when Hetfield repeats the chorus phrase with a modulated melody in soft folky tones, introducing a plaintiveness that creates a delicate dynamic with the band’s macho stomp. But just when you might be wondering why he doesn’t use that part of his voice more often, he pitches up to his usual discomfort zone to resume bellowing like a belligerent Sergeant Major who has just drunk a litre of petrol and smoked 400 cigarettes. And we’re off again!
With certified sales of over 100 million albums and yet another world stadium tour on the horizon, Metallica are absolute masters of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” school of rock. Pretty much every Metallica song is an overwhelmingly impressive exercise in the fierce power of heavy metal but 12 in a row requires a degree of commitment not for the faint hearted.
Still, if you are in the mood for some swaggering, belligerent, Viking warrior defiance (and, let’s face it, who isn’t in that mood from time to time?), then 72 Seasons provides an ideal soundtrack. Or to put it another way, Metallica have made their Metallica record again. Neil McCormick
