HARDWARES

When I reviewed St. Anger in these very pages back during the summer of 2003 I mentioned that Metallica has always been especially interested in keeping up with the Joneses. It’s a statement I still stand by, and one that I feel explains the black album, the Load twins and even St. Anger, the ‘Tallica dudes so eager not to sound dated on that particular record that they inadvertently dated themselves by not including solos (a point that was vehemently brought up by Kirk during the St. Anger sessions, but summarily ignored by the king ‘n’ queen duo of James and Lars). Well, in the last years of this decade it’s become more than apparent that the ‘80s retro phase has made its mark, and everyone from Trivium to Fueled By Fire to American Apparel and now Metallica itself has jumped on the bandwagon, pining for the decade that brought us metal’s commercial golden age. Through Bob Rock-Metallica (’91), alt-Metallica (’96), Slipknot-Metallica (’03) and now '80s Metallica-Metallica you wonder why Metallica, arguably the biggest heavy band ever, hasn’t been able to occupy vanguard status since, like …And Justice For All. Are Lars and James insecure? Have they always felt the dying need to be accepted at all costs, musical integrity be damned? I spent way too much of my teenage years trying to figure out the answers to these impossibly paradoxical questions (basically, I was devastated by Load and Reload in the way that only teenaged music obsessives can be), but since St. Anger’s release I’ve wondered why I wasted all that time. And the indifference continues with Death Magnetic, the apathy this time rooted in the fact that Death Magnetic feels likes the contrived, cover band effort it is: nothing about this record is truthful in the way the first four studio full-lengths were. Though Death Magnetic does very much lean in the direction of Master Of Puppets and Justice (which theoretically should have us all drooling), the fact that it’s been written and done when ‘80s thrash - and the ‘80s in general - are in such pop culture vogue has Death Magnetic reeking of opportunism, much the way Load and Reload did during the mid-late ‘90s (and Slayer’s Christ Illusion did in ‘06, incidentally). Death Magnetic sounds like old men trying vainly to relive the musical glories of their younger incarnations, but the simple fact is that Metallica no longer possesses the hunger to write a good record, as this random, stitched-together collection of old-school/ProTools riffs and annoying turns of phrases à la St. Anger attest. Does that mean James should write tracks like ‘Mama Said’ the rest of his Metallica lifespan? Hell no. It just indicates that when Metallica finally tried writing Master Of Puppets II - the late ‘90s pipe dream we would have done anything for - it was predictably inspired by trend: this is Metallica, after all. And that makes this whole album seem inauthentic, disingenuous and hella forced. The worst part? Lars spent years shit-talking the production on Justice (which was his own damn fault), and yet we’re graced by that very same production style on Death Magnetic - uh, does Lars ever have any sort of consistent opinion? The bell is clearly tolling - time marches on, after all - and it’s at this Death juncture that Metallica should finally just turn off the amps for good.