Metallica’s 72 Seasons – Rolling Stone

Yellow and black are the colors of warning signs, fall shelters, and “baby on board” signs—warnings of imminent danger and disaster if you don’t get your act together. So it’s fitting that Metallica would adopt the color scheme for a cover 72 seasons, Sort of their meditation on the rigors of youth and the perils of growing up. These themes aren’t new to them (see “The Unforgiven,” “Dyers Eve”), but now that James Hetfield and his bandmates are hovering around the age of 60, they see their journey into adulthood differently.

On their twelfth full-length album, Metallica reminisces about their formative years of going with “Full Fast or Nothing,” a lyrical Hetfield reworks from the band’s 1983 debut, Kill them all, On “Lux Æterna”, as well as feeling “broken, battered and scarred”, a line from 2008 magnetic death appearing on the lumbering “room of mirrors”.

Metallica has always been adept at hardcore groove-heavy riffs and labyrinthine song structures, but now, with more than 40 years of experience, they play with more purpose than in the days of the Speed ​​Devils. In the song “You Should Be Burning!” , a tune that evokes their black album hit “Sad But True,” Hetfield sings, “Ask yourself, you might learn/Who’s the next witch you should burn,” before Metallica dives into an eerie bridge with ghost-like vocals unlike anything a thrasher has ever recorded. before.

In “Too Far Gone?” , which has a lively atmosphere, influenced by wobbly guitar attacks, Hetfield asks, “Have I gone too far to save? Life away,” he asks, “Should I fall, fall / Will you come, come?” Whether they are works of fantasy or expressions of Real-Life Weaknesses – Since the last Metallica album, Hetfield has gone back into drug treatment and divorced his wife of 25 years – Tracks on 72 seasons Show an alpha male breaking through the facade of raging metal rage as he searches for his true self.

The interrogation culminates in “Inamorata,” a sprawling 11-minute jam that slowly unravels with slush and snarls as Hetfield sings presciently, “Misery, she needs me/Oh, but I need her more.” The path is a master class in melancholy. It’s Metallica’s longest song ever, but it never gets boring, because Hetfield’s doom feels authentic. Getting through those first 72 seasons may have been torture for Metallica, but now they realize they survived the apocalypse to share their wisdom.