From what I have heard the album is more-over a "polished sounding" effort with a single "gritty" heavy guitar sound in each tune thrown in for good measure. There seems to be very complex rhythm and tempo changes. In certain cases I hear three separate songs in one. Guess what ...Lars FINALLY adds a bit of swing to his drumming in the new single "The Day That Never Comes" and it helps his style IMMENSELY. You see Mr. Ulrich, it isn't how fast you can play ...it is when to play and when not in order to build the song. Adding "touch" and anticipation in your drumming is far more important than speed. It should never of taken Lars this long in figuring this out (or possibly this long until a producer finally showed him). Who knows, maybe he took a quick lesson from Charlie  

The album has more instrumentation than vocals from what I have heard off of it thus far.

It is clearly wanting that "epic" type of song writing and wants to present itself as an epic release.

Whether or not it deserves that adjective remains to be heard.


Ian

Some Guy Wrote:

"a buddy played it on the way to lunch today- Weak!"

________________________


Are you a Metallica fan? Just curious? How many tracks did you hear and why do you consider it weak? I am seeing mixed reviews about this album. Do you like any of their albums?

Here is one of the positive reviews. It is by Rolling Stones. I am certainly taking this with a wheel borrow full of salt being as RollingStone.com is "hit and miss" and ESPECIALLY in that they also gave St. Anger, Metallica's last album a four star rating. St. Anger was a complete mess all the way around. The production was horrid, the songs were bad, and the lyrics were stupid. I can honestly say, it may be the the only album I simply can not stand, and actually HATE (and I am pretty darn hard to completely turn all the way off in every which way when it comes to music). But this, I simply cannot listen to it again. It is that "stomach turning". Not simply because it is supposedly a top notch band, being Metallica that released it, but in the fact that I could not stomach it if it were ANY group. It is that gross.

OK. Let me get back on track. My stomach was starting to churn when thinking of Metallica's previous album.

Anyway here is Rollingstone.com's review (for what it's worth ..) for Metallica's latest album Death Magnetic.

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:FDoJS5sjIsoJ:www.rollingstone.com/reviews/a...


Ian