72 Seasons is Metallica’s eleventh studio album, not counting the collaboration Lulu with Lou Reed. It’s no secret that I have been less than positive to the band’s music after The Black Album. We are many who have been. At the same time, there are loads of people who discovered the band in that era and absolutely adore what they have done after that album. I figure I have said all this before on multiple occasions so why repeat myself?
Well, it’s an important precondition to understand my reasoning I think. Or, maybe it’s not and you’ll just have to bear with me. But I would state that it’s a fact that something happened to Metallica’s music at that time. It’s a clear line between what was and what it was to become. I join the advocates that claim the first period was best and that whatever came after is inferior. You may hate or love me for that statement, but it is the truth.
With that said, there is little nerve to the song on 72 Seasons. It’s well performed and it’s nicely produced but nothing more. The opening tracks are pretty good and aggressive and you get the feeling that they’re headed back to their roots again, just like with Hardwired…to self-destruct. And you would think that the seven years it took between albums they could have written better songs. But no, it seems like they lost the ability.
And Metallica is not alone in that. Many bands, most of them actually, don’t have it in them to create new songs once they have reached success, and success is certainly one thing that metallica has reached. There’s no bigger Metal band on the planet. What often happens is that they become too good for their own good. They start experimenting with all kinds of fancy layering and polished sound which take away all the joy from the compositions.
There are bands that can cope with it, and create complex and well produced things. But they have usually been doing that for their whole career. Metallica started out as an angry band with simple songs, even though the structure was often complex already from the beginning. It seems like they want to do too much these days and something gets lost, the authenticity gets lost somewhere along the way.
So, there are some songs that stand out and if there were more of that kind it would be a great album. But it’s mostly boring and uninspired in my ears. Not bad, far from it, but also nothing really memorable.
