Pop Spotlight

At some point in the last 15 years, Metallica started sounding like themselves again. Certain hardcore fans might say it began with the Rick Rubin-produced Death Magnetic; the more skeptical among us started caring again eight years later with the old-school double album Hardwired… to Self-Destruct. On those albums, Metallica attempted a return to the thrashy tempos, elaborate song structures, and bitchin’ solos of their 1980s glory years, seeming to realize there was no longer any reason to pander to the current sound of rock radio, because Metallica is bigger than whatever goes on in that backwater these days. They release an album every seven or eight years, a relaxed pace that apparently suits them as they near their 60s. When they do put a record out, it’s like they’re making up for lost time, which is what gets them in trouble.

72 Seasons, at a marathon 77 minutes long, delivers everything you could possibly want from a Metallica album in 2023, and so much more on top of that. Too much more. Like Hardwired, its predecessor—the same length, incidentally—72 Seasons is both a thrill and a slog. The best riffs, like the galloping harmonized runs that arrive in the final minutes of “Roomful of Mirrors,” or the call-and-response between machine-gun power chords and jagged leads that open “If Darkness Had a Son,” have the spirit, if not always the magic, of Ride the Lightning or Master of Puppets. But no single song sustains that level of excitement for its duration. That’s a high bar, and they could have gotten a lot closer to clearing it with some editing. There is almost always some bridge, breakdown, or umpteenth repetition of the chorus that a given song would be leaner and meaner without. If a classic like “For Whom the Bell Tolls” can get in and out in five minutes, “Sleepwalk My Life Away” does not need to be seven.

One major difference between Metallica in 2023 and 1983 is the subject matter, which has taken a 180 since the cartoonishly nihilistic days of Kill ‘Em All and is now focused on getting past personal demons rather than following their lead. James Hetfield, who has battled his fair share, writes as if he’s just gotten out of a therapy session. His wellness talk works best when he manages to make it sound metal, as on “Shadows Follow”: “Now I know if I run/Shadows still follow.” It’s less convincing when he just strings together vaguely related words that happen to share the same suffix: dogmatic, traumatic, summarize, patronize. But it seems beside the point to critique 72 Seasons on the level of songwriting, per se. “Lux Aeterna,” the worst offender for dopey rhymes—“Anticipation in domination” is the opening line, and the rest of the song proceeds from there—features at least three different killer riffs and a Kirk Hammett solo that sounds like a motorcycle speeding through a portal into hell. Most importantly in the context of this album, it’s over in less than four minutes. It doesn’t really matter whether a Metallica song is finely wrought. What matters is that it kicks ass.

72 Seasons kicks ass roughly half the time. Not bad, all things considered, but it still leaves you with 30-plus minutes to sit through. The strongest songs tend to travel at the breakneck speed of vintage thrash metal; the weakest edge back toward the midtempo hard rock of Metallica’s ’90s albums. One upside to the excessive runtimes is that even the lackluster tracks might have at least one redeeming moment. Often enough, it’s Hammett’s lead playing. His solo on “If Darkness Had a Son” is like a miniature composition unto itself, with its own dramatic arc, from long bluesy bends to frenzied shredding. Elsewhere, he’s less deliberate, more impulsively expressive, slamming on the whammy bar and wah pedal in passages that have more to do with razor-edged texture than melody. After years of Metallica albums with little if any soloing, 72 Seasons is worth playing if only for the chance to hear one of metal’s greatest guitarists ripping in top form again.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a new Metallica album without a gripe about the production. For 72 Seasons, one potential issue is that the drums—bear with me here—sound too good. Too precise, really, with every snare thwacking and kick thumping at exactly the same volume, with exactly the same articulation, all at a tempo so locked in it seems inhuman. I wondered, almost as soon as I turned it on, with the hi-hat on the opening title track ticking along like a literal metronome, whether there might have been some drum programming involved. I turned to Reddit and found several fans vociferously debating the same question.

After early tragedy, massive success, artistic floundering, interpersonal drama, headline-making battles over technology, and a few on-camera group sessions with a professional performance enhancement coach, Metallica are a band painfully conscious of its own history. Who else would make a sequel to one of the least distinguished albums in their catalog, or construct a miniature second stage for their stadium tour to simulate the small rooms where they woodshedded their earliest material? Whether or not the drums were gussied up digitally, their airtight sound can give the sense of 72 Seasons as an overworked product of that same impulse. Even the simple proposition of Metallica sounding like themselves seems fraught with peril and cause for great deliberation, as if a single stray drum hit might make the whole thing come tumbling down. It is funny, and perhaps even a little comforting, after years of drummer Lars Ulrich getting grief for everything from his stance on file-sharing to the fact that the snare on St. Anger sounds like a trash can, that he would now face criticism for doing his job extremely well. If that guy can’t catch a break in 2023, at least one part of the classic Metallica dynamic still comes naturally.