| Rating: | ★★★ |
| Category: | Music |
| Genre: | Hard Rock & Metal |
| Artist: | Metallica |
This effort is significantly better than the unadulterated tripe and entrails that was the horrible, horrible St. Anger album; the licks sound far more unified, and the Black Album "Metallica Sound" is solidly back. (I leave it to you to decide if that's a good thing, since many people absolutely hated that CD.)
I notice that this album is much more self-indulgent than previous efforts; there's only one song on the entire CD that's less than 6 minutes long, and it's 5:01. The longest settles in at a nearly impossibly lengthy 9:57; frankly, a song this long has to be damned interesting to hold my attention, and these aren't quite strong enough to get there.
I'll give the disc three stars; it's far heavier than St. Anger, and has a much more classic Metallica sound, but the songs are overly long and somewhat repetitive, and lack the... edge, I suppose... that was there to be found on their earlier albums.
I do not plan to support this band by purchasing any more of their music, ever; but this album gives me an indication that they're at least making a half-assed effort to rehabilitate themselves into some semblance of a metal band again, which I suppose is good, in a sort of a "nobody-gives-a-fuck-why-don't-you-go-home-and-drink-beer-on-your-huge-piles-of-money-and-shut-the-fuck-up" kind of way.
