#while not 100% like your asks did incorporate the drummer five

[threedaycharter]

it’s escalated.

@strawbes you may find enjoyment in this !!! not sure yet!!!! i have only written the tua characters a total of once so this is definitely new. also five is like. genuinely 13 so it makes it hard to make sure he’s in character. all their younger selves are purely up to headcanon which gives too much room!

i’ve got a love hate relationship with fanfic writing but as long as someone enjoys it i can live happy LOL

something about those s1 aus where five is actually 13 and viktor being his older brother and then them being brothers stops the apocalypse

[dustedmagazine]

Jennifer Kelly 2020: I’m done expecting next year to be better

Not to belabor the point, which has been covered everywhere, but 2020 sucked. My last live concert was on March 7th. It was 75 Dollar Bill in a beautiful reconfigured industrial space on the Amherst College campus, and I already had questions about whether I should be there or not. The show was worth it, absolutely riveting, and no one I know got sick from it, but a couple of weeks later, Amherst College shut down and then, basically, the world.

When I think about 2020, I think about bands that don’t fully make sense unless you see them live, and how, this year, no one got to see them live. I think about musicians who were barely making it before, now cut off from concert revenues and, in a lot of cases, day jobs at restaurants, coffee shops and bars. I think about six-digit medical bills from multi-week COVID-19 treatments, and how my insurance will only cut that to low five figures. I think about the constant spew of bile and nonsense, the willful destruction of American institutions and the persistent sense that we will never recover from any of this, and I look for refuge.

Most of the time in music. Because the music kept coming even when everything else shut down. Even the artists who were holding back for better conditions ended up releasing EVERY ALBUM ON EARTH starting about September 18th. There was always music, good music, interesting music, beautiful music, and while that doesn’t compensate for a terrible year, it was something.

Here are 10 albums I loved best from 2020, with links to reviews or other articles I’ve written about them.

1. Gunn-Truscinski — Soundkeeper (Three Lobed)

Soundkeeper by Gunn-Truscinski Duo

A gorgeous exploration of mood and tone, this double CD set includes two extended live cuts and ten more recorded just down the road in Easthampton, Massachusetts. (And I thought nothing ever happened up here.) “Pyramid Merchandise” punches the hardest, John Truscinski balancing rock solid beat keeping with abstracted sculptures of percussive experiment, while Gunn finds the sweetness and the growl in his blues-touched guitar sound. But “Ocean City” is pure lovely respite, with big rounded notes dropping slowly and with grace through wavering transparencies of sustained tone. Long, searching, “Soundkeeper” will rekindle your longing for live improvised music, while the closer “For Eddie Hazel” vibrates with supercharged intensity, the notes and the steady rhythm too bright and beautiful to look at straight on.

2. Six Organs of Admittance — Companion Rises (Drag City)

Companion Rises by Six Organs of Admittance

Chasny imbues the down-home with wonder and the inexplicable with natural grace in this album inspired by stargazing. The album’s name references the way Sirius appears close to Orion, and the rollicking “The Scout Is Here,” commemorates the appearance of the Oumuamua asteroid, but this is no squiggle-y space opera. The music is mainly made of clean, all-natural picking, blues bends, and rambling jangle, though ruptured, periodically, by rushing, whooshing, amplified electronic sounds. Warm, simple clarity is tipped with awe in finger-picked “Black Tea,” while mists and mysteries predominate in evanescent “Worn Down to the Light,” but the joy comes in the balance between the ordinary and the unknowable shimmering like stars in a black sky.

3. Gil Scott-Heron and Makaya McCraven — We’re New Again (XL Recordings)

When the estate of Gil Scott-Heron asked Chicago composer, percussionist and hip hop chopper Makaya McCraven to reimagine the artist’s last, most personal album, McCraven jumped at the chance to tackle its themes of black struggle, black family and perseverance. McCraven surrounded Scott-Heron’s words with shimmering, post-jazz arrangements that incorporated some of his father’s recordings (his dad is jazz drummer Stephen McCraven) in an ongoing tribute to the blood relatives who shape and equip young black men for a challenging world. The music is wonderful, very different from the original, spare, blues-based arrangements, but they open out the master’s words in an illuminating way. I like, especially, the hustling, shuffling movement of “New York Is Killing Me,” which summons the city’s energy as clearly as the feel of heat rising out of a subway grate in August.

4. Obnox — Savage Raygun (Ever/Never)

Savage Raygun by Obnox

Obnox’s psychedelic mayhem roars like a California wildfire, setting a torch to rock, soul, hip hop, jazz and punk with fuzz-crusted abandon. Icons like Hawkwind flare out and curl into white-hot ash, while even Neil Young’s lick from “Southern Man,” is consumed in the all-encompassing heat of Lamont Thomas’ onslaught (“Young Neezy”). A double album, Savage Raygun covers a lot of ground, but in such a kinetic rush that it seems like one entity that stretched from end to end.

5. Anjimile — Giver Taker (Father/Daughter)

Giver Taker by Anjimile

Anjimile sounds beautifully comfortable with their new vocal range in this second full-length, which follows a gender transition. Pitched low and warm, their voice effortlessly navigates subtle melodies, integrating complex, African-leaning rhythms into songs about love, identify, family friction and the possibility of redemption through embracing one’s authentic self.

6. Osees — Protean Threat (Castleface)

Protean Threat by Oh Sees

John Dwyer has fronted bands called The O.Cs., The Ohsees, Thee Ohsees and now just Osees, evolving from a one-man bedroom pop outfit to a gleefully slopping garage pop project to a droning, krautrocking motoric monster along the way. This newest iteration takes a little of this, a little of that, from the repertoire, putting Dwyer’s best Bo Diddley-esque stomper in years (“If I Had My Way”) next to a wiggy psychedelic freak bomb called “Toadstool” which is adjacent to the dub-scented, narcotic head trip called “Gong of Catastrophe.” The mix works because Dwyer and his band commit to all of it, sequentially and within tracks. It’s the best Osees in years, all the good things in one package.

7. Sam Amidon — S-T (Nonesuch)

As always, Amidon starts with traditional, mostly folk and blues material and, as always, he transforms it into something more adventurous, spiritual and faintly otherworldly. With Shahzad Ismaily and Antibalas’ Chris Vatalaro to back him up, he breaks down the unyielding contours of pre-modern banjo tunes and porch blues, finding steady drones and complex afro-beat syncopations in their steady melodies. You can hear “Cuckoo Bird” a million times in a million different voices and never hear it as luminous and open-ended as here.

8. James Elkington — Ever Roving Eye (Paradise of Bachelors)

James Elkington is always pressed for time, maybe because he works regularly for so many other people’s bands (Richard Thompson, Jeff Tweedy, Spencer Tweedy) and collaborates with others (Steve Gunn). And yet his second solo album brims with balm and solace; he finds time in the interstices between warm, jazz-scented, Pentangle-esque verses and intricate flurries of picked and strummed and electric guitar. Even “Nowhere Time,” which exhorts “It is time for you to move,” has an ease and calm to it, while “Moon Tempering” is as still and lovely as winter starlight. Ever-Roving Eye is an album that assures us we’ll get it all done somehow, but just stop for a minute and listen.

9. Jehnny Beth — To Love Is To Live (Arts & Crafts)

This riveting solo debut from the Savages frontperson is both quieter and more intense than her full-band compositions, juxtaposing incendiary spoken word with the hedonistic thump of the dance floor. Guests are varied—Joe Talbot of IDLES at one pole, the actor Cillian Murphy at the other—but the music never drifts from Jehnny Beth’s singular viewpoint. Compare her to PJ Harvey or Beth Gibbons or Bobby Gillespie as you will (I did), but this is her 100%, and there’s nothing else like it.

10. Cable Ties — Far Enough (Merge)

Far Enough by Cable Ties

Australia churns out quality punk bands like the Hershey factory makes kisses, and Cable Ties, formed in Melbourne by four young rebels, ranks as one of the best to surface here in America this year. “Tell Them Where to Go” is the money track here, all rust-crusted bass crunch and ragged estrogenated vocal energy. But let’s not put them in the “girl band” ghetto. As I said in my review, “The easy thing would be to compare McKechnie’s vibrato-zinging vocals with those of Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker or her verbal agility to Courtney Barnett, but the blunt force and agile violence of the music, brings to mind post-punk bands like the Wipers, Protomartyr and Eddy Current.”

Honorable mention

I also really enjoyed these albums in 2020.

Lewsberg — In this House (12XU)

Damien Jurado — What’s New Tomboy (Mamabird)

Bill Callahan — Gold Record (Drag City)

Mike Polizze — Long Lost Solace Find (Paradise of Bachelors)

Destroyer — Have We Met (Merge)

Decoy w/ Joe McPhee — AC/DC (otoROKU)

Thurston Moore — By the Fire (Daydream Library)

Tobin Sprout — Empty Horse (Fire)

FACS — Void Moments (Trouble in Mind)

Elkhorn — The Storm Sessions (Beyond Beyond Is Beyond)  

Howling Hex — Knuckleball Express (Fat Possum)

Wendy Eisenberg — Auto (BaDaBing)

Xetas — The Cypher (12XU)

Califone — Echo Mine (Jealous Butcher)

Chouk Bwa & The Ångströmers — Vodou Alé (Bongo Joe)

Shopping — All or Nothing (Fat Cat)

Bonny Light Horseman — S-T (37d03d)

Tashi Dorji — Stateless (Drag City)

The Slugs — Don’t Touch Me I’m Too Slimy (2214099 Records DK)

Dr. Pete Larson and his Cytotoxic Nyatiti Band — S-T (Dagonetti)

[smocatoff]

Music Retrospective #1: Metallica

In 1981, Danish drummer Lars Ulrich put out an ad in a magazine known as The Recycler for a jamming buddy. The man who answered that add? James Hetfield. Lars then asked Metal Blade records founder Brian Slagel if he could record a song for their compilation album Metal Massacre. Slagel gave them the okay, and the rest they say is history.

Officially forming in October of that year, Metallica would go on to influence the next 30 years of hard rock and heavy metal. And in this review/retrospective of their staggering discography, I intend to give you my critical thoughts and personal take on one of the finest metal bands of all time, and one of the bands that inspired me to become a musician.

Ground rules before we get going: No live albums and no compilations. So no S&M, no Live Shit, no Garage Inc., you get the idea. First album up!

Kill ‘Em All

Starting out with bassist Ron Mcgoveny and shred master himself Dave Mustaine, Metallica enjoyed a fair amount of success on the club scene, and recorded some demos for Metal Blade Records, but due to drug problems and all around shitty behaviour, James and Lars gave Davey boy a bus ticket and told him to get out of the band, with McGovney leaving soon after. The line up that would grace the debut record Kill ‘Em All would be James, Lars, and new guitarist Kirk Hammet and bassist Cliff Burton. Oh boy, what a debut album it was.

Firing on all cylinders with scorching riffs and solos, this album provides you with some of the best 80s thrash metal that you can find. Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield provide blistering thrash metal guitar work, with some of the heaviest riffs and firey solos you can find. Further, the mastery of Cliff Burton’s bass work is on full display, most notably on the incredible solo known as “Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)”. My personal favourite song would have to be the 7 minute biblical head banger, which Dave Mustaine would later perform on in its original incarnation on Killing is my Business (We’ll talk about that band another time), “The Four Horseman”. While a great album, it is certainly not a perfect one.

Kirk had been told to emulate Dave’s playing as much as possible during the recording of this album, and while stellar, it would pale in comparison to the unique style Hammett would eventually adopt later on. Moreover, I was never a big fan of lower quality, 80s thrash production style, so I was not the biggest fan of hearing James’ voice caked in reverb and the playing not as tightly knit as on later albums. Plus, the weakest song on the album has to be “Phantom Lord”. I’m sorry, but this is some weak ass, generic thrashy bullshit. Nothing memorable about that song.

Overall, an essential album for metal fans, and Metallica fans especially.

8.5 out of 10

Ride the Lightning

With thrash metal beginning to flourish in the early 80s with the likes of Slayer and Anthrax gaining prominence, as well as bands like Exodus and Sodom starting to form and get noticed, Metallica maintained its foothold atop the mountain and did so with 1984’s “Ride the Lightning”. Becoming more technical and pristine in their playing and production, Metallica evolved into the band we know and love on this album. Incorporating acoustic guitars, more complex arrangements, slower tempos, and providing some of the grandest sounding metal I have ever heard, Ride the Lightining is a treasure. From brooding ballads such as Fade to Black, the magnificent title track, the Hemmingway inspired anthem For Whom the Bell Tolls, this album features Metallica venturing into more morose and serious lyrical content, resulting in some of their best material ever. My personal favourite song, a little gem of a diddy known as “Escape”.

I doubt you could find a song you didn’t like on this album. Highly recommended. With Metallica getting this great, I don’t know how we’re going to top this album. But oh boy, do they ever top this album.

9.5 out of 10

Master of Puppets

In the year Nineteen hundred and eighty six of the common era, the gods bestowed upon us MASTER OF FUCKING PUPPETS. Good god. This. Fucking. Album. Easily Metallica’s most pristinely produced, tightly performed, and expertly written album. Evolving to combine the more progressive, grand arrangements of “Ride the Lightning” with the more straightforward, blistering thrash of Kill ‘Em All. Kirk Hammet and James Hetfield’s guitar work raging through with precision and soul, and Lars ripping out some of the most blistering drum work he has ever done, with Flemming Rassmusen and the band conjuring the most pristine and polished sound they could. There is a reason why this is regularly cited as one of the finest albums in metal history. Not a single bad song can be found on this album. Personal Favourite? Jesus god, throw a dart. But if I had to choose, I have always had a soft spot for the heavy as hell “The Thing That Should Not Be”.

This was the first Metallica album I heard, but even if you shed the nostalgia goggles and look at the album with critical eyes, you still find a towering classic of the genre. Unabashedly recommended, buy it yesterday. 

10 out of 10

...And Justice for All

Metallica has reached an all time high...but tragedy would strike, and take the band to a very personal low, as bassist Cliff Burton would pass away due to a bus accident on September 27th, 1986. With the tragic passing of Cliff Burton, Metallica was short a bassist. Enter Flotsam and Jetsam member Jason Newstead *cut to interview regarding Jason joining Metallica* With Newstead entering the picture, Metallica would then release the follow-up to the staggering Master of Puppets known as And Justice for All. Look, this is great album in its own right, but this album had to follow Master of Puppets. This album could not live up to such hype. But despite personal tragedy and a insurmountable challenge of trying to match, or even top, a bonafide masterpiece, Metallica managed to pump out a highly respectable album.

Continuing down the grander and more progressive road they had been travelling since Ride the Lightning, they also incorporated much darker and more brooding lyrics and guitar tones. This is no more exemplified by the song which resulted in Metallica’s first music video, the number one music video on MTV when it was introduced, and their first American hit on the Billboard Top 100, “One”.

While a very good album, Justice falls flat in certain respects. Firstly, while there aren’t necessarily bad songs on this album, some of the songs like “The Shortest Straw” and “Frayed Ends of Sanity” are a tad on the weaker side. Also, there’s the whole bass thing...so for whatever reason, whether it be as a form of hazing, or because of feelings regarding Cliff,  Lars told the album’s mixer, Steve Thompson, to lower the volume on the bass, and despite questioning this, he was made to do it anyways...Okay...

Really? Are you serious? Just because you’re “hazing the new guy”, or you miss your friend, or are just the self absorbed putz even Metallica fans know you to be, it doesn’t give you the right to pull childish bullshit like purposefully messing with the mix of a widely released album. Now, the other hazing bullshit, I don’t care about that. Pulling a rib on the boys can be light hearted fun, but when personal shit like that bleeds into your work and you leave an album without bass lines to properly fill it out, you officially become a prick. Despite me standing by his side for Napster (I’ll explain that thing another time), this is just juvenile. Luckily, a fan mix called “And Justice for Jason” remedied that, and allowed people to hear what Justice would have sounded like if it were properly mixed. Hell, despite Lars being a primadonna and taking certain things a bit too personally, Newstead has always remained fairly chill about the situation.

Overall, despite the bullshit with the bass mixing and some weak cuts, ...And Justice for All is a solid follow up to the towering classic that is Master of Puppets, and is definitely worthy of your collection. Recommended.

8.5 out of 10

Metallica (The Black Album)

With Newsted established as the band’s new bassist, and with song ideas brewing during their tour for Justice, Metallica hopped back into the studio with brand new producer Bob Rock, and popped out the highest selling record the band would ever produce, the self titled album commonly referred to as The Black Album. Lauded by many music publications, with 4s and 5s being thrown at it like Shibata throws out stiff kicks, everyone seemed to love it. However, does it truly live up to that acclaim? My answer: not quite.

Do not get me wrong, this is one of Metallica’s first five albums, so it’s a great fucking record. Pounding, groove laden metal riffs coupled with more melodic songwriting, it was a clear departure from the progressive, grandiose thrash metal of their previous 3 records, yet it still retained Metallica’s style and seminal songwriting. There are some superb cuts, with headbanging anthems like “Sad but True” and the smash hit “Enter Sandman” as well as my personal favourite hidden gem “Holier than Thou”, but there are some weaker, dare I say filler level cuts such as “Through the Never”.  Yeah, call me when your case of the word vomit ends guys. But overall, this is a stellar record and it is a very important benchmark for Metallica, as well as 90s metal. Moving on!

8 out of 10 

Load

Short haircuts? Check. New sound and experimentation with genres that alienates even the most steadfast of fan? Check. Trying even fucking harder this time for mainstream attention? Check. Yup, Metallica’s gone full fucking 90s on us. Load is for sure a weaker album than the Black Album, and it is full of hard rock snoozers like “Bleeding Me” and “Poor Twisted Me”, but when this album turns it up and actually goes, good god does it go. Hard rocking headbangers like “Ain’t My Bitch” and “Wasting my Hate” as well as more melodic, downpaced rock such as my personal favourite track “The House That Jack Built”, While the music may have mellowed out, Kirk and James’s guitar playing has not and they rip out some killer riffs on this record. Hell, even the really far out there experiments work very well, such as the pop-y sounding “Hero of the Day” and one of the best fucking modern, mainstream country songs ever “Mama Said”. Like, that is a sad statement on the genre when fucking Metallica outdoes the sorry excuses for country acts that were starting to permeate the genre in the 90s, and we are talking dick cheese such as Billy Ray Cyrus, Kenny Chesney, and all that shit.

Metallica’s “Load” is not for everyone, but if you look past and ignore all the 1st degree filler that is on this record, there are some superb cuts that rank among Metallica’s best work in my opinion.

6.5 out of 10

Reload

Metallica went into the studio to record Load and actually had enough material to fill a double album. Metallica decided to delay the release of a majority of this material in order to perfect it, and the result of this was 1997’s “Reload”. Continuing down the more commercial hard rock path they had started travelling, Reload offers, in my opinion, a more consistent and sonically pleasing offering than its predecessor. With alot of the grader experimentation from Load being scrapped, Metallica decided to unleash some pure fucking rock and roll, with James and Kirk throwing down headbanging riffs and Lars producing some memorable drum beats. With powerful hard rock beatdowns like “Fuel” and “Attitude”, as well as slower, more melodic and groove laden songs like “Devil’s Dance”, “Unforgiven 2” and “Where the Wild Things Are”. While this album is better than Load, it does have its share of filler like “Bad Seed” and “Slither”. My personal favourite song though has to be the somber ballad “Low Man’s Lyric”. While Reload is certainly not a return to form for the band, it is a more consistent and better offering than Load and certainly worth a listen.

Metallica wouldn’t release a proper studio album for another six years, releasing other offerings in the meantime, such as the cover album Garage Inc., as well as S&M, a live show Metallica did with a full symphony orchestra.  This period would also prove to be one of the most tumultuous times in the band’s career, which is expertly shown in the documentary “Some Kind of Monster”. During this harrowing period, bassist Jason Newsted left the band, citing creative and personal differences, including Jason’s want to do other projects. There was also...Napster...welp, we had to do it. Let’s talk about Napster 

Okay, so basic rundown of the issue. Metallica records a song entitled “I, Disappear” for the soundtrack of Mission Impossible 2. However, a demo of the song was leaked, and ended up getting radio airplay. The band was able to trace this leak back to a file found on Napster, which led them to also find out that all their shit was on Napster. Lars then filed a lawsuit, and after a whole giant legal battle involving Metallica and a ton of other artists, Napster was forced to file Bankruptcy and was shut down for good. People...did not like this. With people staging mass destructions of Metallica CDs, and many media outlets just roasting the fuck out of the band. It was not a pleasant time for the boys. Here’s the thing though. Amidst all the media hoopla and everyone jumping on the “fuck Metallica” bandwagon...the band was in the right. Firstly, Music is a business like any other, and while these artists do for the most part love what they do, they are in this to make a living out of it, i.e. MAKE MONEY. Piracy of music, while admittedly not a big blow to the artists, is still a blow to their profits. Could you blame someone for trying to take down something that was giving away their product for free without their permission? Secondly, a fucking DEMO was leaked. Meaning the song was in the rough stages of its production. It was like that unfinished version of X-Men Origins, or that trailer of The Mummy without all the sound effects. It doesn’t look good on the band, so you should obviously shut that down and shut it down fast. In summary, Metallica did nothing wrong and took down a program full of stolen shit, and people had a hissy fit about it because “muh free music!” Fuck those morons for not understanding how business works.

After the turbulent tides of this period had begun to subside, with James getting clean after a year of rehab, a new bassist being found in Rob Trujillo, and being honored on MTV Icons, Metallica would drop their next studio album and it would prove to be a return to form...sort of...not really.

7 out of 10

St. Anger

This album is one of the most reviled things in music history. Every fan, every critic pretty much hate this record and think it’s an abomination. But, and you’re probably gonna stop reading for this (you probably stopped after the Napster thing), I don’t think it deserves the shit it gets. Don’t get me wrong, 2003’s “St. Anger” is a flawed record for sure. From the odd production, guitar tones, drum sounds, and some of the most tedious songwriting Metallica has ever engaged in, this album is far from a masterpiece. But, that does not mean this is not devoid of highlights. Despite its repetitious nature, there are some gems on this record, and some great riffage from James and Kirk, plus Lars puts on an incredibly underrated drum performance. My personal favourite song has to be the badassery of a diddy known as “Shoot me Again”. This is not a great record, do not get me wrong. It’s arguably the weakest thing Metallica has ever done. but if you give it a chance, there are some solid gems on this record. With Metallica reformed, they would hold off another 5 years on a new record, but we did not expect the course correction that came.

6 out of 10

Death Magnetic

Welcome back, Metallica! With the band parting ways from Elektra records, Metallica was in need of a record label for their new album. Enter the legend known as Rick Rubin. Signing with Warner Brothers and hiring on Rubin as a producer (I use that term liberally by the way because Rubin doesn’t do much producing these days and leaves it up to his underlings), Metallica popped out the staggering comeback known as Death Magnetic. Released in 2008, this album proved to be Metallica’s best record since the Black Album, nixing the repetitive nature of St. Anger and returning to the more grandiose, progressive and technical thrash metal style that made them the legends they are. The guitar work on this album is superb, with James and Kirk laying down some excellent riffs and incredible guitar harmonies. This also proved to be a return to form for Lars Ulrich, laying down some of the most precise drum work he has ever done. My personal favourite song would have to be the insanely heavy instrumental, something that Metallica hasn’t done since Justice, the song known as “Suicide and Redemption”, which like “Call of Chuthlu” and “Orion” before it, served to show off the technical side of their bass player, and Rob Trujillo lays down some killer bass licks in this song. 

While this is arguably their best songwriting in many years, the production leaves a little to be desired, and that’s putting it nicely. The major culprit in all of this? Those fucking guitar tones. Like, what the fuck did you do? It sounds like a two chainsaws grinding against each other, and it splits your fucking ears. Like, listen to that album with good headphones and at a fairly high volume, it’s painful. But, see, here’s the thing. Slayer (A band we will be talking about in the near future), also had Rubin and his crew as producers for World Painted Blood, and it worked for Slayer because that suits their sound. This does not suit Metallica, and it fucking kills an otherwise excellent record. Despite the pitfalls in the production, Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” is a fantastic return to form, and will kick your ass. Buy this record.

With Metallica back on the rise, what new projects would await them? *Listens to Lulu*...DONE!

7.5 out of 10

Lulu

This album...is SHIIIIT. 2011’s collaboration with, of all fucking people, Lou Reed entitled “Lulu” is a failed experiment. Combining the styles of two artists, namely, the experimental, 60s and 70s rock music of someone like Lou Reed and the thrash metal headbanging of Metallica, they did not fit together at all. And listen here folks, collaborations between odd pairings of artists can work. Korn’s team up with various dubstep artists on The Path to Totality album generally was a solid effort by that band; David Bowie, being the musical chameleon he is, fit like a glove when Nine Inch Nails and him worked on remixing “I’m Afraid of Americans”; when Weezer and Lil Wayne teamed up to do “Can’t Stop Partying”...ok, point taken. But still, odd pairings in music can work. But this just didn’t. From the sloppy songwriting put forward by Metallica, to Lou Reed’s rambling street preacher vocal style which only works on certain songs, this album sounds like Lou Reed decided to just rant over a bunch of b-sides Metallica had left over and had no idea what to do with. I suppose if I had to pick a highlight from this album, it would have to be the 2nd last song “Dragon”, a heavy offering that actually manages to marry the styles of these bands quite effectively. But overall, just avoid this record, outside of hearing a couple songs. It’s not for Lou Reed fans, it’s not for Metallica fans, i’ts for no one. Say it with me homeboys, MOVING ON!

3 out of 10

Hardwired to Self Destruct

With the dogshit that is Lulu behind them, Metallica embarked on a few years of touring, playing pretty much nothing but old shit, playing for the first time with the big four, as well as doing fan requested setlists, it was time to head back into the studio and make some kick ass music. The result of this was last year’s Hardwired to Self Destruct. This album is both stronger and weaker than Death Magnetic. It is stronger in that it is much more tightly produced, with those chainsaw guitars being replaced with a more crisp sounding tone more in line with their previous output. With the band getting up there in age, they however show no signs of slowing down, with James’ voice not showing an instance of faltering since blowing it out all those years ago. Further, the guitar work on this album is superb, and Lars lays down some tight and precise drumming. However, this album isn’t the tightest in terms of songwriting, and begins to falter around the end of disc one and by disc two they let out some grade A filler like “Man-Unkind”. Yeah, this song sounds like they’re trying to hearken back to the days of Load with this one, and those days are gone and should stay gone. But this album is not devoid of highlights, with my personal favourite track being the cybernetic dystopian fury of the closing song “Spit Out The Bone”. Hell, the first disc on this album fucking slays, with tracks like “Moth Into Flame” and the grandiose, almost Maiden-esque “Atlas Rise.” Overall, a solid album full of really heavy songs, but the band’s age is showing, and the idea well is starting to run dry. It might be time to hang it up. But we’ll see.

7 out of 10

Well, I thank you for reading this tirade about one of my favourite bands of all time, the incomparable Metallica. Hope you have a good day.