By BRIAN GIFFIN
REGARDLESS of what they do, Metallica is always going to hold a special place in my heart, even if it was just because the title track of Ride the Lightning blew my mind in ways few songs had done before or have done since when I first heard it. Metallica is also special to the history of Hot Metal because it was at their 1989 Sydney concert where Steve Mascord and I were first at the same place at the same time, although we didn’t know each other then.
Many, many things have changed in the gulf of years since that night at the Hordern Pavilion, but Metallica has remained, amassing a following and an influence that few people who were listening to “Hit the Lights” or “Seek and Destroy” back in 1983 could have possibly imagined. Pretty much everything they release, say or do is written about and commented on, ranked, profiled, criticised or analysed by anyone with a passing interest in guitar-based music, even by (especially by?) those who long handed in their Metallica fan club membership cards. Now releasing an average of one new studio album every five years, though, makes each new one a huge event for both those who still care and those who claim they don’t.
So what did I – someone whose interest in Metallica waned with the release of Load and was only really revived after seeing them at Soundwave in 2013 – think of 72 Seasons? Normally I’d take a day or two and a few listens to even begin to review an album like this, but as it’s likely to be one of the most written about albums of 2023, I figured that I’d do something based on my thoughts as I listened to it in full for the very first time, and do a track-by-track thing from notes I jotted down as I listened. Here goes:
72 Seasons: The title track opens the album with a cranking pace, Hetfield’s voice the perfect balance between snarling roar and melodic semi-croon thing he hits in choruses. Hammett steps up with two wah-drenched (naturally) solos, the second a true scorcher.
Shadows Follow: This one kicks off with a militaristic stomp, then into a smooth groove with a snaring bass undercurrent. So far the album is a riff-fest just two songs in but it feels a lot more natural than usual.
Screaming Suicide: One of the singles we’ve already heard, “Screaming Suicide” is pacey and catchy straight-up thrasher with a bunch of hectic soloing.
Sleepwalk My Life Away: Not sure about that title. I’ve always thought Trujillo was wasted in this band but here he’s given rein to open things with some gnarly bass – probably the first time one could really say that about a Metallica album since 1986, which is also when people stopped saying ‘gnarly’. Quite a bouncy track which always seems a weird thing to say about Metallica.
You Must Burn!: This one has a slow grind kind of feel, the first one that really drops the pace but it’s far from anything one could call a ballad and it builds up to a big, epic-sounding, stomping riff.
Lux Aeterna: The first track we got to hear from the album. My first thoughts about this at the time were that it was a promising taster, even if it sounded like what a Metallica cover band would sound like after they started writing their own Metallica-inspired songs. It still sounds like that, but it’s a cool straight-up catchy metal song.
Crown of Barbed Wire: There’s a bit of a rolling groove here but as it progressed I felt it was perhaps the least distinguished of the tracks so far, or maybe everything was just dragging on a bit long and that songs like “If Darkness Had a Son” just aren’t as good as the ones earlier on. Metallica being Metallica, they’ve made yet another album that runs far longer than it really needs to, and by now my initial enthusiasm had started to fade and I began to just let the album wash over me instead of trying to analyse everything. What struck me about 72 Seasons as a whole was how bouncy and alive it felt, how the production let the music breathe. There’s riffs in abundance but even though the album is, as usual, too long, the individual songs aren’t, even the TOOL-length (and vibe-like) “Inamorata”. Metallica usually keeps something cool until last and they’ve done it again here. Again, it’s Hetfield-heavy, lyrically cathartic and self-analysing but it still feels like a band album, especially given Trujillo has more to do with all the groove going on.
So, first impressions? I like that they’ve kept it heavy and that the songs bounce along at a decent pace. It doesn’t feel forced at repudiating their 90s output like Death Magnetic did and the songs are overall more memorable than some of those on Hardwired… (which I’ve listened to a lot by now). Crucially, it could have sounded like a group of 60 year old multi-millionaires just piddling about, but it doesn’t and I really have to hand it to them for that. On first listen, this is a pretty strong album for a band this far into their career but, again, it probably didn’t need to run for 77 minutes!
