Okay, I finished listening to it, beginning to end.
IT SUCKS.
I wanted to like it. Really, I did. I even expected to like it. By the end of the first song, I was even convinced that I'd be running out and buying this thing tomorrow with a grin. But ... no.
No, I wasn't comparing this to old Metallica - not consciously, anyhow. From a standpoint of being a metal album, I'd only give this a 6/10 ... the same as I'd rate it as being a Metallica album. It starts strong. The first two songs? AWESOME. Great tunes. By the time the third track comes along, though, something starts coming unwound ... I dunno, maybe because the tempo slows, or maybe because the extended Kirk Hammet solos are starting to sound a bit repetitive. Then there's "The Day That Never Comes," which sets the tone for the next few songs - slower, more mainstreamy, and seeming as though the band is recording this album by playing it straight through from beginning to end and starting to become physically exhausted. (I could understand this in concert, but on an album, this seems absurd to me for some reason.) By the fifth song, Kirk's spastic solos are really starting to get on my frickin' nerves. When "Unforgiven III" rolls along, I want to give up on this steaming turd and refuse to listen to the rest of it on principle, alone - the first two "Unforgiven" songs were, well, unforgivable, so who the HELL thought anyone WANTED to hear a third iteration of this audio-borne feces? The album finishes on one last genuinely good track, however - "My Apocalypse" - which is straight-up badass ... aside from the overly loud snare that just sticks out above everything else for some weird reason.
The major flaws:
1. Again, James should STOP TRYING TO SING. Given, he's got it down good and back to basics with the first couple of songs. The vocals were spot-on RIGHT ... even though the audio mix was all wrong, and there's no reverb to make it sound "finished." The third ... ehhhh, okay. But the rest, where he falls into that "Load" and beyond style of country-esque yodeling , I could totally do without;
2. Poor Kirk seems to be trying his damnedest to overcompensate for the lackluster bassist (who looks to me like Danny Trejo without a mustache and with a gallon of oil dumped over his head) and James's inability to remember how to play anything beyond basic rhythm guitar, as he's just going berserk on the guitar solos ... which ALL SOUND EXACTLY THE SAME. "Wheeeooohwheeeoooh meedly-meedly-meedly wheeeeeeeeeawwwwrrrrrr!" ... basically, play that really fast part from the later part of "One" on repeat and add some random annoying wah pedal effects to it, and that's his solos. Really frickin' obnoxious by the time you hear it for the fifth or sixth time on the album. Kirk, you're good, but maybe put some of that energy you've got into teaching James how to play guitar, too, and get his old sober arse to work with the rest of you;
3. There is NO reverb on ANY of these tracks. None. Zero. Zilch. I dunno if the whole "live, in the studio" kind of sound is the "in" thing with these guys lately, but I for one am frickin' sick of hearing all their tunes sound like they're playing in a room filled to the ceiling with pillows. What happened to the echo-y reverb we used to hear on everything before, up to and even including the "Black Album?" It's the reason why James's vocals stand out so much more, and why I want to smash Lars Ulrich's face through the skin of his snare drum before I go insane from hearing a slightly more muted version of that same BUNG BUNG BUNG BUNG BUNG sound that helped ruin St. Anger. Just like how I use a distortion pedal to help hide my utter lack of guitar skills, adding reverb to some or all of the instruments in the mix helps smooth things out and help 'em blend together - instead, we get this cacophony of instruments that seem to be competing instead of playing together, and then James throws his effing yodeling in on top of it. AAAARGGH!!
In short, the whole damned album sounds like a collection of demo tracks - this coming from a band whose annual income from royalties and endorsements and whatnot is so huge that they probably dwarf the wealth of some third-world nations? WTF?!? 
4. It's almost impossible not to feel compelled to compare this in some way to old-school Metallica simply because it's so glaringly obvious that they're trying WAYYYYYYYY too hard to shove the whole "look, we sound just like we used to!" thing in everyone's face. I'm absolutely certain that I actually heard AT LEAST three different riffs or licks that were borrowed from various songs of the old-school albums, as if injecting recycled bits of their classic works will somehow redeem their current tunes and automatically result in awesomeness. Umm, no, sorry, ain't working. In fact, it has quite the opposite effect (with me, anyway): it makes the stuff sound like someone else trying to be Metallica. Seriously. If I didn't know that this was actually a new and authentic Metallica album, I would swear this is just some wannabe cover band. It's pretty bad when a band is so far gone from its roots that it's blatantly obvious that even they can't play their own original songs, let alone compose anything 100% new of the same caliber, so they have to resort to plagiarizing their own stuff. Ugh.
5. I take back what I said about Metallica releasing an all-instrumental album as being a cool concept. Please, God, if you have any mercy at all, PLEASE never let Metallica do this. The one instrumental track on the album is frickin' PAINFULLY impossible to listen to all the way through. It's a spastic, random, meandering, "let's just make some crap as we go and hit record" bastard of a tune where it sounds like Kirk has just come out of a 20-year coma and is struggling to relearn how to play a solo ... and it just never frickin' seems to want to end! I tried. I really tried. But I couldn't listen to this track all the way through. I skipped around it with the slider, and every section of it sounded exactly the same with only slight variations in tempo.
So ... yeah. It sucked. Sorry. Anyone who wants to buy it based on the hype or the "it's almost-kinda-sorta Metallica for really really, man" concept ... whatever. Go for it. Me, though, I'm not buying - not just because I'm disappointed in it as a Metallica release, but because it simply isn't full-quality metal. PARTS of it are good metal, yes, but overall ... no. It's like comparing an S197 Mustang to a '69 Mustang - the S197 is trying reeeeeeeeally hard to be the '69, but it's really just a faked-out retro throwback to the glory days of the spirit upon which it was based. That, and the S197 is mostly plastic, whereas the '69 had FAR more metal ... and actually had a full frame.
Metallica or not, I don't dig this thing. Give me the first two tracks and the last, and I'll lie to myself and call them "previously unreleased bonus tracks" and celebrate the dim hope that perhaps Metallica is not forevermore a farce, but the rest of the poo on that album is just ... not good metal.
IT SUCKS.
I wanted to like it. Really, I did. I even expected to like it. By the end of the first song, I was even convinced that I'd be running out and buying this thing tomorrow with a grin. But ... no.
No, I wasn't comparing this to old Metallica - not consciously, anyhow. From a standpoint of being a metal album, I'd only give this a 6/10 ... the same as I'd rate it as being a Metallica album. It starts strong. The first two songs? AWESOME. Great tunes. By the time the third track comes along, though, something starts coming unwound ... I dunno, maybe because the tempo slows, or maybe because the extended Kirk Hammet solos are starting to sound a bit repetitive. Then there's "The Day That Never Comes," which sets the tone for the next few songs - slower, more mainstreamy, and seeming as though the band is recording this album by playing it straight through from beginning to end and starting to become physically exhausted. (I could understand this in concert, but on an album, this seems absurd to me for some reason.) By the fifth song, Kirk's spastic solos are really starting to get on my frickin' nerves. When "Unforgiven III" rolls along, I want to give up on this steaming turd and refuse to listen to the rest of it on principle, alone - the first two "Unforgiven" songs were, well, unforgivable, so who the HELL thought anyone WANTED to hear a third iteration of this audio-borne feces? The album finishes on one last genuinely good track, however - "My Apocalypse" - which is straight-up badass ... aside from the overly loud snare that just sticks out above everything else for some weird reason.
The major flaws:
1. Again, James should STOP TRYING TO SING. Given, he's got it down good and back to basics with the first couple of songs. The vocals were spot-on RIGHT ... even though the audio mix was all wrong, and there's no reverb to make it sound "finished." The third ... ehhhh, okay. But the rest, where he falls into that "Load" and beyond style of country-esque yodeling , I could totally do without;
2. Poor Kirk seems to be trying his damnedest to overcompensate for the lackluster bassist (who looks to me like Danny Trejo without a mustache and with a gallon of oil dumped over his head) and James's inability to remember how to play anything beyond basic rhythm guitar, as he's just going berserk on the guitar solos ... which ALL SOUND EXACTLY THE SAME. "Wheeeooohwheeeoooh meedly-meedly-meedly wheeeeeeeeeawwwwrrrrrr!" ... basically, play that really fast part from the later part of "One" on repeat and add some random annoying wah pedal effects to it, and that's his solos. Really frickin' obnoxious by the time you hear it for the fifth or sixth time on the album. Kirk, you're good, but maybe put some of that energy you've got into teaching James how to play guitar, too, and get his old sober arse to work with the rest of you;
3. There is NO reverb on ANY of these tracks. None. Zero. Zilch. I dunno if the whole "live, in the studio" kind of sound is the "in" thing with these guys lately, but I for one am frickin' sick of hearing all their tunes sound like they're playing in a room filled to the ceiling with pillows. What happened to the echo-y reverb we used to hear on everything before, up to and even including the "Black Album?" It's the reason why James's vocals stand out so much more, and why I want to smash Lars Ulrich's face through the skin of his snare drum before I go insane from hearing a slightly more muted version of that same BUNG BUNG BUNG BUNG BUNG sound that helped ruin St. Anger. Just like how I use a distortion pedal to help hide my utter lack of guitar skills, adding reverb to some or all of the instruments in the mix helps smooth things out and help 'em blend together - instead, we get this cacophony of instruments that seem to be competing instead of playing together, and then James throws his effing yodeling in on top of it. AAAARGGH!!
4. It's almost impossible not to feel compelled to compare this in some way to old-school Metallica simply because it's so glaringly obvious that they're trying WAYYYYYYYY too hard to shove the whole "look, we sound just like we used to!" thing in everyone's face. I'm absolutely certain that I actually heard AT LEAST three different riffs or licks that were borrowed from various songs of the old-school albums, as if injecting recycled bits of their classic works will somehow redeem their current tunes and automatically result in awesomeness. Umm, no, sorry, ain't working. In fact, it has quite the opposite effect (with me, anyway): it makes the stuff sound like someone else trying to be Metallica. Seriously. If I didn't know that this was actually a new and authentic Metallica album, I would swear this is just some wannabe cover band. It's pretty bad when a band is so far gone from its roots that it's blatantly obvious that even they can't play their own original songs, let alone compose anything 100% new of the same caliber, so they have to resort to plagiarizing their own stuff. Ugh.
5. I take back what I said about Metallica releasing an all-instrumental album as being a cool concept. Please, God, if you have any mercy at all, PLEASE never let Metallica do this. The one instrumental track on the album is frickin' PAINFULLY impossible to listen to all the way through. It's a spastic, random, meandering, "let's just make some crap as we go and hit record" bastard of a tune where it sounds like Kirk has just come out of a 20-year coma and is struggling to relearn how to play a solo ... and it just never frickin' seems to want to end! I tried. I really tried. But I couldn't listen to this track all the way through. I skipped around it with the slider, and every section of it sounded exactly the same with only slight variations in tempo.
So ... yeah. It sucked. Sorry. Anyone who wants to buy it based on the hype or the "it's almost-kinda-sorta Metallica for really really, man" concept ... whatever. Go for it. Me, though, I'm not buying - not just because I'm disappointed in it as a Metallica release, but because it simply isn't full-quality metal. PARTS of it are good metal, yes, but overall ... no. It's like comparing an S197 Mustang to a '69 Mustang - the S197 is trying reeeeeeeeally hard to be the '69, but it's really just a faked-out retro throwback to the glory days of the spirit upon which it was based. That, and the S197 is mostly plastic, whereas the '69 had FAR more metal ... and actually had a full frame.
Metallica or not, I don't dig this thing. Give me the first two tracks and the last, and I'll lie to myself and call them "previously unreleased bonus tracks" and celebrate the dim hope that perhaps Metallica is not forevermore a farce, but the rest of the poo on that album is just ... not good metal.
I couldnt of said it better.
