• AllMyVinyl #59
• Band: Metallica
• Album Title: Death Magnetic
• Release Date: 12 Sep 2008
• Date purchased: 19 May 2022
• Location purchased: Walmart
• Color of vinyl: Officially called “Magnetic Silver”
• Number of discs: 2
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

So we get to 2008, and the first full studio album by the current iteration of Metallica.  The version of Metallica that exists in 2024 came into being in the cycle before this, but they didn’t record the last album (St. Anger) together.  Robert Trujillo didn’t join until the tour for that album was gearing up, so this is the first album that the four of them recorded together – and the second album to this point that was credited to all four Metallica members.

At the time this came out I had a lot of friends who had checked out from Metallica.  After Load/Re-Load, they were done, and then St. Anger didn’t help that AT ALL.  So another Metallica album was met by a lot of casual fans with a general “eh” due to the perceived (incorrectly IMO) notion that they had lost their way.  However, Death Magnetic came out and of course I was buying it because Metallica had been an “Auto purchase” for me since the 80’s.  Listened to it, and thought “OK, this is what they should have done after “And Justice For All”.  A lot of people agreed with me.  This felt like old school Metallica again.  Those of us who were into Metallica at the time that never gave up on the band went out and evangelized .  “You’ve GOT to listen to this – it’s what Metallica used to be!”  Managed to convert a few of them back into the fold.  It’s a damn good album.  The hard part was getting people to actually listen to it – which you had to do, super easy to put it on and drown it out in your own thoughts of “they suck now”, but if you break through that you’ll find an amazing as hell album.

However, it wasn’t without its dissenters.  First it was produced by industry vet Rick Rubin, who is well known as having produced a metric ton of different musical styles – metal being just one of them.  However, a lot of people at the time were annoyed at Rubin’s work here as this was “Ground Zero” if you will in what became known as the “loudness wars”.  Now I’m not the kind of person that pays a bunch of attention to this, so the detail is mostly lost on me, but..  I did like the album as it was.  I know there was a lot of talk about the version that was available via Guitar Hero, and the music being over compressed.  I’fe seen “proof” in the form of waveforms in programs like Audacity, and honestly – I just don’t care.  The album as it was works for me.

I bought this when was brand new on CD in 2008, as that was still the dominant format.  Vinyl in 2008 was NOT a thing for me, so I would never had had a copy when it was brand new.  I bought it on CD, and of course there was iTunes.  However after I got my record player in 2020, Metallica started re-publishing their entire studio catalog on vinyl through Walmart exclusively.  I think it was 3 batches of albums, but they released everything at that point (which is everything but 72 Seasons).  Death Magnetic came in a set which also included Load, Reload, St. Anger, & Garage Inc.  Have to imagine this was the set that sold the least. haha.  Every one of these 2022 re-releases came in colored vinyl which was marketed with some silly name created to tie into the album in question.  For this one it was officially labeled “Magnetic silver”, which basically was silver vinyl with a bit of marbling in the album design.  If you look below, I posted a pic of the vinyl sitting on my turntable.  In this series I post pictures of the albums playing to show that I was actually playing it, but for this I wanted a pic of the static album design to be here so you can see what it looked like.

Geting back to this album and its tunes…

A Metallica album is always good for one thing above anything else. Riffs. This delivers right from the start. I love the main riff and vibe of the start ofg the album (This was Just Your Life). Kind of puts you in the right frame of mind. There’s little small guitar bits sprinkled through the song that I really dug. Nice drum fills by Lars in there too. Great opener.

The End of the Line – Found myself air drumming to this with my feet – like I’m doing the kick drums with my feet. Found myself singing along with the background vocals. A sure sign I liked it. 2/3 of the way through my old friend makes an appearance – a Time change.

Beat Broken & Scarred – Starts off with another riff that I love. Part of me wanted it to carry on through the entire song, but they change gears into something else that’s also damn good. This was the fourth single off the album, and got a lot of attention. Also harkens back well to their earlier sound of fast and faster – with several time changes along the way. Great riffs by Kirk too.

The Day That Never Comes – Metallica takes it down a bit. Which for them can be quite slow when they want to. But this one isn’t *THAT* slow. But that’s what you think at the start. This is a seven and a half minute long song, so there’s time for things to change, and buy do they. A few mins in, we’re into loud stuff and screaming vocals – so this song has several different parts. The guitar solo part sounds like pure thrash, so this song is definitely a Jekyll & Hyde type of track. Also parts of the guitar work in this section really remind me of Iron Maiden’s sound at times.

All Nightmare Long – Two songs in a row that are over 7 minutes. Probably has something to do with why this is a double vinyl. I always felt this song could have gone on the And Justice for All album – except here you can actually hear the bass. Good track. Didn’t feel like almost eight minutes at all – the mark of a good longer track for sure.

Cyanide – Not an official single from what I can gather, but as I sat down to listen, I thought it was. It was first played live in my back yard (Dallas), but I wasn’t there. It’s a good catchy track. Not as trash as some of the other parts of the album, but that’s fine. Wall to wall of the same sound can be boring. When this album was new, was one of the first songs I latched onto. I have a vague memory of some “non metal” people being annoyed at a song titled Cynadide having the lyrics contain “suicide”. Probably would have been evidence in the mid 80’s at Tipper Gore’s PMRC thing.

The Unforgiven III – I didn’t care for this at all. Sequel songs are rare, but a double sequel is even rarer. Shame they changed the tune too much from the original, I didn’t care for this. Only track on the album I can say that about. If they called it ANYTHING else, I might feel differently, but because they invoked the first two, you can’t help but compare it – and in that regard it fails.

The Judas Kiss – Enjoyed it, but nothing I can think of to write about it. It’s not bad, just took it in and went “Yeah, OK, liked that”. :)

Suicide & Redemption – Metallica instrumentals are usually something to behold. This is no different. A great song – and long one to boot, coming in at just under ten minutes long (9:57). When I listened today, it again didn’t feel like a ten minute long song. But some of the classic songs of that length don’t really feel that long when you’re in the middle of them (Child in Time, Rime of the Ancient Mariner).

My Apocalypse – We close out the album with a Grammy award winning song (for Best Metal Performance). Metallica is by default a thrash metal band, and this mixes thrash in with their not “as fast” sound – it’s a great mix of sounds – no wonder it won a Grammy. Great stuff.  Makes you try and do “air instruments” for more than one instrument at a time which makes you look like a flailing moron in your office (so I’m told). But when you’re in that “air zone”, you don’t care.  It’s the only song today that when it was over, I picked up the needle on the record player and played it again a second time.

Metallica is back, baby!

Now I never left – I stuck with ’em for the period which took us through Load, Reload, & St. Anger.  But it was nice to see them do something new that invoked their most popular sounds of the past and be accepted again by everyone.   I’m a child of the 80’s, but I tend to prefer bands that are rooted in the 70’s more.  Metallica is one of the few bands born in the 80’s that I file along with bands I adore from the prior decade.

One interesting thing here.  The band recorded a lot of songs for this album, and of course not all of them made it onto the main album.  There were four songs that were held over (Hate Train, Just a Bullet Away, Hell and Back, & Rebel of Babylon) which eventually came out three years later on an EP called “Beyond Magnetic“.  Hell & Back was my favorite, it should have been on the main album.  Anyway, I bring this up because Black Sabbath did the exact same thing a couple of years later.  On their “13” studio album they left off a handful of studio recordings that eventually showed up on an EP the following year that was titled “The End“.  Why am I mentioning this?  The two things have one thing in common. Rick Rubin produced both projects.  Hmmm….

I didn’t see them on this tour – in fact, the last time I saw Metallica live was in 1991 on the Black album tour.  It’s been awhile.  Great album – and all the things I said above about “coming back to them” still apply today.  If you don’t know this album and only know ’em from the era when Cliff was still with us, give this a try.   Great stuff.

“… break this empty shell forever more”