Metallica - The Zero Point of Modern Metal

I define as “proto-metal” all the “negative” hard rock before the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. I define as “metal” the “New Wave Of British Heavy Metal”. I define as “heavy metal”: thrash, speed metal and their offshoots. Black Sabbath were the most important “proto-metal” band; Iron Maiden were “metal”; Metallica were “heavy metal”.

If metal is one of the great families of rock, and Metallica are the most complete manifestation of metal, then Metallica are one of the most important rock bands of all time.

Just as every punk band “is” the Sex Pistols and then, possibly, also “something else” (punk means Sex Pistols); so every metal band after 1983 is Metallica and then, possibly (and here we can fit in all the various subgenres: death, doom, black, epic, power, gothic), also “something else”. Heavy metal means the music that Metallica play. Because thrash and speed are the lowest common denominator for every metal style from '83 onward. And Metallica either invented or institutionalized thrash and speed. Metallica, along with the Rolling Stones and a few others, are among the very few cases of a popular music act whose fame is directly proportional to their historical importance.

The first act of the Metallica revolution (1981, Los Angeles, California) consisted of changing the mass culture of the more or less maladjusted young people of Los Angeles. In the early '80s, these kids largely moved from a hardcore culture to a heavy metal culture (in doing so, Metallica effectively imported the NWOBHM into America, which at the time barely knew it and thought even less of it). The very fact that hardcore and heavy metal (thrash, speed) were both Los Angeles phenomena shows just how much the latter owed to the former (as for the relationship between punk and metal in England, consider that the New York phenomenon of the Ramones intervened in between).

The second act of the Metallica revolution consisted of spreading the thrash and speed language around the world, a language on which every form of metal in the '80s and '90s would be based.

The third act of the Metallica revolution consisted of spreading across the globe an inward-looking, nihilistic attitude, as opposed to a pacifist and humanitarian socio-political stance.

The fourth act of the Metallica revolution consisted of making and unmaking heavy metal: in 1983 they institutionalized thrash and speed metal, in 1984 they fused the two styles into what is properly heavy-metal sound, and in 1991 they brought that sound back to more convoluted rock architectures (a sign of the genre's end).

Technically, Metallica started out from what, thanks to them, came to be recognized as the invention of Motorhead (thrash-metal), arrived at what is properly their own invention (speed-metal), and channeled it all into a granite-hard sound that alone can properly claim the name heavy-metal. The speed-and-thrash album is Kill'em All. The heavy-metal album, as synthesis and overcoming of the two previous styles, is Ride The Lightning.

Metallica presented themselves as the most violent, fast and extreme rock band ever (in every sense). In reality, young as they were, they were first and foremost deep connoisseurs of rock music history. In hindsight, we can say that what Metallica did back then was simply draw the inevitable conclusions from the premises laid out before them. These premises ranged from the satanism of Black Sabbath to the hedonism of Aerosmith (naturally passing through Deep Purple and Rush), but were in fact centered on British metal and punk bands, as well as the Californian hardcore scene of the late '70s and early '80s. Metallica did deliberately what Motorhead had done by instinct: fusing metal and punk. Except that in Metallica's time and place, punk was called hardcore, and it was something substantially different from its English relative. In England, while the NWOBHM flaunted metal purism, not only did metal draw from punk (Motorhead), but the reverse also happened: Exploited, Discharge, Anti-Nowhere League were among the most important sources of inspiration for Metallica. Metallica had their work cut out trying not to miss the most extreme and heterodox products of British metal, which in 1980 was in a state of ferment. Heterodox because, rather than looking to the NWOBHM in the strict sense (Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Saxon, Rainbow), Metallica were born thanks to the push of bands at odds with the prevailing movement in England: besides Motorhead, above all and in various ways, the avant-garde of Venom and the retro sound of Diamond Head were indispensable for the Americans. Americans who had no metal tradition back home: if the old hard-rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd and Blue Oyster Cult could teach something about song architecture, it was the new hardcore bands Misfits and Dead Kennedys who taught the law of violence and, above all, of speed of execution. From Europe, Accept and Mercyful Fate were ultimately shining examples of how metal was just one step away from reaching its heaviest side.

But Metallica's most important revolution was to break the hitherto unshakeable identification, found in the finest rock, between art and life. With Metallica, metal becomes a genre of consumption not because it is made in a commercial way, but because it deals with revolutions that aren't really revolutions, that is, with ethical/existential norms to be measured out in the daily life of both the office worker and the member of parliament. That Metallica was, first and foremost, the cult of those who don't just listen to metal but live metal, or live for metal, simply means that any object with more functions also allows for users with more facets.

To Metallica's credit is also the fact that they were always pure, raw rockers, with no concessions whatsoever to studio effects, orchestration, electronics or anything else. Their songs — even the most mediocre ones — are conceived first live and in the garage, and only afterwards, if at all, put into the studio and onto record. Listening to a Metallica live album or a studio record is almost the same experience. And only the greats of rock manage that.

What follows deserves separate discussion. Metalheads are usually hostile to punk, and with good cultural and musical reasons. It is therefore unfortunate to have to tell today's metalheads (as well as their forebears) that in praising Metallica they are also praising their enemy, namely punk; or rather, hardcore. Metallica, the quintessence of heavy-metal, are heavy (speed, thrash) and not merely metal (Judas Priest, Iron Maiden) precisely because they learned the lesson of hardcore. Being a follower of heavy-metal means, however indirectly, being a follower of hardcore. Social history proves us right on this. Los Angeles (or the whole hard rock world, for that matter?), before Metallica's arrival, was essentially split between hardcore kids and metalheads. The latter thought the former were snot-nosed brats, and the former thought the latter were clowns.

But what did it mean to be a metalhead in the Los Angeles of the very early '80s? Being one in contemporary London meant being a follower of the NWOBHM. In Los Angeles, where Iron Maiden and company would find true converts only after Metallica broke through (at the time it was also hard for an Angeleno who wanted them to get hold of European records), being a metalhead meant having as your life model the hard rock of Motley Crue, Ratt and Van Halen. The Los Angeles situation is telling: it's not that hardcore and metal are irreconcilable (otherwise Metallica wouldn't have been possible), but that only a certain kind of metal, the classic kind, is irreconcilable with hardcore. The Los Angeles hardcore kids and their metalhead fellow citizens held each other in mutual contempt, because the latter were in fact hard-rockers, epicureans, closer to rock 'n' roll culture than to the nihilistic spirit of the '80s.

Metallica, by bringing metal halfway into hardcore territory in the '80s, not only formally estranged it from the old '70s hard rock, but also stripped it, content-wise, of an entire legacy incompatible with the new negative, pessimistic and apocalyptic climate (and it is in this sense "new wave") of the dawning '80s — a climate that hardcore had already, in its own way, interpreted. In Los Angeles, Metallica essentially swept away the two factions of hard rock, channeling them into one; in the rest of the world, they flooded the various metalheads with hardcore practice, even though those metalheads neither realized it nor would have subscribed to it.

In May 1981, on the occasion of a Michael Schenker concert (the legendary guitarist of Scorpions and UFO) in Newport Beach, California, eighteen-year-old guitarist James Hetfield (Los Angeles, 1963, coming from a difficult family situation) meets for the first time fellow eighteen-year-old drummer Lars Ulrich (Denmark, 1963, who was part of a Motorhead fan club and had close ties to Diamond Head). They would soon be joined on lead guitar by twenty-year-old Dave Mustaine (California, 1961).

In March 1982, Metallica, still without a steady bassist, make their live debut at the "Radio City" in Anaheim, and stake their claim on the future by opening for the already-classic Saxon at the legendary "Whiskey A Go-Go" in Los Angeles.

On June 14, 1982, Metallica appear for the first time on vinyl with the track "Hit The Lights", on the Metal Blade compilation Metal Massacre, put together by the very young Brian Slagel. Metal Blade was among the very first American independent labels to focus on metal (most American indie labels of the time were devoted to hardcore). In theory, we could say that Metal Blade brought metal (NWOBHM) over from England and made it blossom into American heavy-metal (thrash-speed). In practice, though, while it's true that it was only thanks to Metal Blade (and to magazines that, even in America, were starting to circulate, like "Metal Mania") that the English bands found converts in the United States, it was only thanks to Metallica that metal became "heavy." It's no coincidence that the other bands on that, nonetheless legendary, compilation (such as Black 'N' Blue, Bitch, Cirith Ungol) were essentially hard rock, and in any case closer to the NWOBHM of Saxon than to the (avant-garde, truly metal) NWOBHM of Iron Maiden. Over time, about a dozen Metal Massacre compilations would be released, paradoxically all centered on what sprang from that single avant-garde track offered up by Metallica amid so much now-forgotten mediocrity.

In July '82, riding the wave of their first underground successes, Metallica (by then, not without some wit, dubbed "the Ramones of heavy-metal") record the demo No Life 'Till Leather (reissued in 1997 as a sort of bootleg titled The Early Days), containing nearly all the material that would be channeled, the following year, into their debut album.

Meanwhile, however, Metal Blade's factotum Brian Slagel, realizing that in Los Angeles the retro glam of Motley Crue and Ratt was more appreciated than the innovative clatter of the Metal Massacre bands, decides to take his caravan of bands all the way to San Francisco. In San Francisco, Metallica find in Cliff Burton (ex-Trauma; California, 1962 – Sweden, 1986) exactly what they were looking for: a bassist capable of keeping up with the speed and violence of their sound. So, from December 28, 1982, what is now a stable four-piece moves, along with all its gear, to 3132 Carlson Boulevard, in downtown El Cerrito.

1983 is Metallica's year. Having left behind Brian Slagel, Metal Blade, Los Angeles and San Francisco (where, for one reason or another, they hadn't managed to scrape together the ten-or-so thousand dollars needed at the time for a professional recording), Metallica were summoned to the opposite side of America, to New Jersey, far from any music capital, by a then-unknown Johnny Zazula, a young and well-off metal enthusiast who had founded the independent label "Megaforce" (soon destined for legendary status). It's during the drive from San Francisco to New Jersey that Mustaine breaks with the rest of the band: he will play for the last time on April 9 at "The Ritz" in New York; in his future await his own, and his alone, Megadeth.

On April 16th, Kirk Hammett (New York, 1962, ex-Exodus: one of the most important metal bands, which — due to Hammett's withdrawal — nearly broke up and delayed its debut by a couple of years) made his debut with Metallica in Dover, New Jersey. Hammett is a guitarist more speed than thrash compared to Mustaine: in fact, within Metallica it would be the lead guitar (Hammett, that is) handling the speed side and the rhythm guitar (Hetfield, who by nature was closer to this style anyway) handling the thrash side. But the fact remains that Hammett is not a songwriter, while Mustaine was: with Hammett replacing Mustaine, Hetfield and Ulrich lost a composer and gained a willing performer instead. Hammett plays speed metal, but his real passion, like that of every lead guitarist, has always been instrumental virtuosos (Hendrix, Satriani, Page), especially those with a Latin touch (Santana, Jerry Garcia).

On May 10th, recording sessions began for the debut album (they lasted six weeks). On July 25th, Kill 'Em All was released, selling 7,000 copies almost instantly — no small number, given the independent distribution and the genre, which was both avant-garde on one hand and frowned upon in America on the other. But it was in England, the homeland of classic metal, that Metallica, as was only natural, found the greatest acclaim at the time: they were seen — and rightly so — as innovators pushing to the extreme edge of a genre, the NWOBHM, that risked closing in on itself. What the English didn't and couldn't see was the relationship Metallica had with the metalheads' bogeyman: punk. If Metallica (and heavy metal as speed and thrash) is inexplicable without American hardcore, it is equally inexplicable without all those essential English bands that went down in history as punk-metal: Discharge (the most remarkable and extreme), Exploited, Anti-Nowhere League, Rudimentary Peni. Bands born in the one and only homeland of both metal and punk (the two most influential rock styles ever), proof that it was no longer possible, under the same roof (London), to pretend not to know one another. After all, punk and metal are phenomena confined to the late Seventies. With punk-metal, with this coincidence of opposites, those fundamental avant-garde bands (and why is the term avant-garde never used in the hard rock field?) also wanted to signal that the Eighties had arrived.

Kill 'Em All. 1983, 10 tracks, 51:03. Producers: Paul Curcio (ex-Mojo Men; a veteran songwriter and today a producer for Santana) and, as executive producer, Jon Zazula (later with Anthrax and Overkill).

In 1988, when MTV decided to launch Metallica and heavy metal, it reached No. 120 on Billboard (in 1989 it went gold). If importance is measured by influence, this is objectively the most important metal album of all time and one of the most important rock albums ever, having single-handedly institutionalized a subgenre, heavy metal, of vital importance to rock as a whole. Finally, what other albums can claim to have practically invented two rock styles (here, thrash and speed)?

This album, however, would not have been possible without Motörhead, who provide, on every level — from the music to the lyrics to the song titles to the album title itself, which seems to echo Overkill — the essential source of inspiration. It was Motörhead who invented thrash metal. It was Metallica who realized it and turned it first into speed metal and then into heavy metal tout court.

The album also ushers in a new era in terms of song length and track count. In the Seventies, metal (like hard rock) had largely stuck to the standard of 8 tracks in 40 minutes.

The first side of the album is generally considered thrash and the second speed (for the differences between the two styles, I refer you to my history of metal).

The average age of the members of the band that conceived and performed Kill 'Em All was under 20.

Every track on this album is a classic, fundamental to rock and to its respective genres. Every track is performed with the same skill, passion and effectiveness by a band only just beginning to grasp the full extent of its own explosive power. It borders on excess, such is the enthusiasm and frenzy on display.

In hindsight, however, it seems only right to single out the tracks we might call masterpieces within the masterpiece, standing above the rest.

"Motorbreath" (Hetfield) [3:03], Hetfield's spiritual testament, is a tribute to Motörhead played at hardcore tempo: the quintessence of thrash, capable of darkening the mood just like Black Sabbath did — who, incidentally, fell short on their own most famous song and the clear reference point here: "Paranoid".

"(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth" [3:27] is Metallica's most refined and experimental track: an abyssal instrumental split between the first two minutes of the most moving distortion in rock history (the Black Sabbath effect) and the following two minutes of acid-drenched storm.

"Whiplash" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [4:06], one of the most extreme tracks in rock history: it opens like Black Sabbath, then launches into the sharpest guitars ever recorded alongside a murderous, Motörhead-style rhythm section; an anthem to metal self-sacrifice and to burned-out youth (there are many ways to burn out a youth: rock 'n' roll, punk, goth, metal), it declares: "We are gathered here to maim and kill".

The other tracks.

"Hit the Lights" (Hetfield/McGovney/Mustaine/Ulrich) [4:17], the first song Metallica ever wrote, and yet already so mature — and above all, the only track where a still-immature Hetfield howls without restraint (more punk than metal): otherwise, it's evenly split between a Motörhead-style driving charge, a Black Sabbath-style doom bassline, and point-blank Judas Priest-style solos.

"The Four Horsemen" (Hetfield/Mustaine/Ulrich) [7:08] is an epic, demanding, and intricately structured track; Hetfield's teenage voice (which, sadly, will never again sound so extreme and "child of the damned") is irresistible (he sings: ⟦Q1⟧), his epic delivery is pure punk; the rhythm section's syncopations are devastating, answered by dazzling, tightrope-walking guitar runs. "Jump in the Fire" (Hetfield/Mustaine/Ulrich) [4:50] is the record's only minor misstep: too green, too naive, too self-referential, too AC/DC.

On "Phantom Lord" (Hetfield/Mustaine/Ulrich) [4:52] the Motorhead influence is once again decisive: especially in the rhythm section (Hetfield's guitar included); the suffocating intensity then opens up into a moving, introspective passage before returning in the finale, where Hammett's guitar truly earns its place in the metal history books.

"No Remorse" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:24] is a granite-hard track built on an imposing speed-metal framework, its chorus slurred out, thrash-style, by what sounds today like an almost unrecognizable Hetfield. These are songs with a musical life of their own: they aren't built to accommodate the voice, which is a guest, not the protagonist. Even lyrically, the gap with English metal (especially Iron Maiden) is striking: here we're in the bleakest nihilism (call it Nazism if you want to drag it into politics, though more as savagery than as ideology). Only Motorhead (who, incidentally, weren't very English) had been more chauvinistic and un-PC. Hetfield even lets out a thin scream that, given his limited vocal range, is all the more harrowing for it. These are sadistic, masochistic songs. They are uncompromising anthems to self-destruction, with no room for reflection of any kind. "Seek & Destroy" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:50], launched by a now-legendary guitar riff, reworks the content of the previous holocaust in a different form.

"Metal Militia" (Hetfield/Mustaine/Ulrich) [6:06] is the most extreme track alongside "Whiplash": Motorhead in the rhythm, a tortured Hendrix in the solos. Metallica will never again tackle the themes (nor, truth be told, the approach) of this album. Themes that, while on one hand they may seem banal (the macho self-satisfaction of the rocker), on the other hand are not, because they end up negating even themselves in a programmatic, redemption-free mass suicide that accepts neither compromise nor purpose. It's one of the most perverse and demonic chapters in the history of music.

On February 3, 1984, Metallica kicked off their first European tour, opening for Venom on several dates (one of their forefathers - fathers who today play the role of sons to their own offspring, opening, when they're even allowed to, for them! Then again, our world also allows Frank Black to open for Placebo!). Metallica would stay in Europe for almost all of 1984. In Copenhagen, again with Zazula, they recorded their second album. Ride The Lightining was released in America, on Megaforce, on July 27, 1984. It immediately sold 75,000 copies in the United States alone (an outrageous figure given the context and the independent label: in 1985 it would reach number 100 on the Billboard chart, and on the wave of success generated by Master Of Puppets, on November 5, 1987, Ride The Lightnining would go gold in the US, and platinum in 1989).

Then the twenty-one-year-old Metallica, acting like entitled lords, demanded from Zazula money that the man they owed almost everything to simply didn't have. So, after having sought him out less than a year earlier, they fired him and left him to his Megaforce.

Ride The Lightning. 1984, 8 tracks, 47:47. Produced by Metallica themselves. Ride The Lightining is the first heavy-metal album in history. That is, the first album to fuse thrash and speed into something different, something derived from both styles yet reducible to neither. Heavy-metal takes shape as a form of metal that is structured, complex, and rich in solos like speed metal, yet violent, nihilistic, compact and direct like thrash.

To those who know nothing about metal, but above all to those who claim to know metal, such distinctions tend to seem far-fetched. Their truth is borne out, beyond the ears, both by Metallica's own statements and by the fact that the earliest fans abandoned the band (no longer hearing in it the thrash, the Mustaine, the Megadeth, the hardcore, in short). In this synthesis of thrash and speed lies the foundational heavy-metal from which would spring not only every metal subgenre to come (from death to epic to grind), but above all the achievement of a sound at decibel levels never heard before, one that grants every rock band (even non-metal ones) an immeasurably wider expressive range. With Ride The Lightining, Metallica, just a year after their debut, brought about a new, radical and definitive revolution, even as it remained a continuation of the one before it.

With Ride The Lightining, the epic quality of the lyrics intensifies alongside that of the music. The result is a setting no longer urban, but galactic. A sense no longer of death or rupture, but of eternity, or of hammering away at a single point.

Ride The Lightining is, in terms of intent, the most important Metallica album after Kill'em all: it can be considered the second cornerstone album in the history of metal. From here until 1991, for seven years, Metallica would say nothing new: and when the new finally arrived, it would, in effect, mark the end of metal.

The masterpieces. "Fight Fire with Fire" (Burton/Hetfield/Ulrich) [4:45] combines unparalleled violence with equally matched heaviness. No human ear had ever heard anything more extreme. And yet that heaviness, that rigidity, that grandiloquence, while bolstering the track's intensity, also begin to alienate Metallica from their previous (more clattering, more punk) sound. It's simply the track that invents heavy-metal, and one of its absolute high points.

"Fade to Black" (Burton/Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:59] is the prototype of the crescendo metal ballad (as "Child In Time" by Deep Purple had been for hard rock). Acoustic guitars (and Hetfield shows he has absorbed country music too), and Metallica's best, most introspective lyrics: ⟦Q2⟧. It's true that the ballad has been the cross to bear and the guilty pleasure of every hard rock band. But it's also true that this one transcends that rhetoric because it's sincere. And it was written by twenty-one-year-olds.

"The Call of Ktulu" (Burton/Hetfield/Mustaine/Ulrich) [8:55] is, without question, Metallica's greatest track and the last mark Mustaine left on his old band: an instrumental in which all of the group's harmonic, melodic, compositional and performative stature comes through. A piece that rises delicately and then, bit by bit, in a frantic crescendo, reaches its most explosive and catastrophic foam, yet somehow held in check by a higher ordering architecture. In the finale, reached through a thicket of some of the most mournful riffs in history, a swarm of distortion looms large, seeming to contain within it the abysses of every generation.

The other tracks.

"Ride the Lightning" (Burton/Hetfield/Mustaine/Ulrich) [6:41] is an epic in the vein of "The Four Horsemen", this time devoted to the age of the future rather than that of the past. Metallica keep singing the praises of death, but from now on they'll do so peacefully, to exorcise it, no longer sadistically (as on Kill'Em All). Metallica (and this is their lesson to metal's future generations) can, using the same language and the same means, produce now an interpretation in favor of, now one against, those very same things. Within the space of a year, after breaking what could be broken, the band moves from a nihilism as scorching as history and society itself to an "all interior" stance that even turns humanitarian toward both of them (in this case, the theme is advocacy against the death penalty: as suggested by the electric chair on the cover).

"For Whom the Bell Tolls" (Burton/Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:09] is a banal theme (from Black Sabbath to Ac/Dc) that finds its reason for being in one of the most visceral guitar interplays ever recorded: on one side, the desolation of the rhythm guitar, on the other, the sublime, half-heroic half-wounded lead guitar. When the vocals come in (always too adolescent to carry the rhetoric of advocacy), it's pure apotheosis.

"Trapped Under Ice" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [4:08] is yet another tunnel through torment (this time ice instead of fire), cut from the same sonic cloth as "Fight Fire With Fire". "Escape" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [4:24] slows the pace and smooths out the rough edges, giving itself over to narrative and hallucination. A catchy track, but one lacking any real bite.

"Creeping Death" (Burton/Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:35] is a relentless, unceasing tornado: the ABC of heavy metal (alienation and violence this time find an Egyptian setting, approached with as much naivety as radicalism).

Master Of Puppets(1986): otto brani, 54:00. Produttore: Flemming Rasmussen.

On February 21, 1986, Master Of Puppets is released by the major label Elektra. Elektra (the record company behind Doors, Television, Cure, Bjork, Motley Crue, Queen, Tracy Chapman) was founded in New York in 1950 by Jac Holzman to promote new folk and jazz musicians. Since 1969 it has been part of WEA alongside Warner and Atlantic (and was acquired by Asylum in 1973). Warner is today the only "major" still American-owned.

Master Of Puppets had been recorded the year before, again in Copenhagen, but this time with all the comforts, indulgences and trappings of a fashionable rock star lifestyle. It immediately sold 700,000 copies (ten times the previous album, which had already been considered a sales record), then went gold on November 4 and stayed on the charts for 72 weeks (reaching Platinum status in the US on July 28, 1988). Although Ratt and Motley Crue's glam still dominated the American scene, heavy metal was starting to be taken seriously.

Master Of Puppets is simultaneously the best and the least important of Metallica's first three albums (the artistically significant ones, that is). The best because it is the most accomplished in terms of playing and has the most skillfully and thoroughly crafted compositions; the least important because it can't compare to the avant-garde inventiveness of Kill'em All, and limits itself, however masterfully, to restating the ideas (of form and content) learned on Ride The Lightning. That said, it remains a milestone of heavy metal.

The masterpieces.

"Master of Puppets" (Burton/Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [8:38] is what "The Four Horsemen" first and "Ride the Lightning" later had failed to be: an extraordinarily sustained and conceived epic that conveys its statements of existence through narrative. When Hetfield sings "I'm your source of self destruction", he does so not, as in Kill'em All, to embrace the idea, but to stand against it, attributing it to the "puppet master" who would enslave us. "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:28] was meant to be the obligatory ballad, but instead turns out to be the album's other masterpiece, subverting its own intentions and delivering an intimate pathos that surpasses – while still building on – even "Fade to Black" (because it carries a greater charge of memory and disillusionment), a quality that would only be found again, for the last time, in "Unforgiven".

"Disposable Heroes" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [8:14] is granite in its purest form: no compromises, not even Motorhead anymore: just Metallica and their savage heavy metal confronting only themselves. The guitars erect towering ramparts. "Damage, Inc." (Burton/Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:08] is an assault on the eardrums, modeled on the ferocity of Minor Threat's hardcore. You can feel the weight of these disproportionate distortions crashing down and burying us. The ending, not satisfied with the beating already dealt, cuts off whatever breath might still remain. But Metallica are at their limit here (and understandably so!). Beyond this point – and the next albums will be exactly that, beyond – the violence will carry on for its own sake, but will no longer even find itself.

The other tracks.

"Battery" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:10], opened by a medieval-sounding acoustic counterpoint, erupts into yet another unstoppable, irreducible, incestuous, apocryphal, repeat-offending catastrophe, in the vein of "Fight Fire With Fire".

"The Thing That Should Not Be" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:32] is a terrifying excess that trades the speed of Kill'em All for the heaviness gained on Ride The Lightning. If Metallica were born to be the fastest band in the world, now they want to be the heaviest, the most "heavy" in the truest sense. This track would lay the groundwork for all of Metallica's worst output from 1991 onward ("Enter Sandman" is a shoddy copy of this infernal behemoth).

"Leper Messiah" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:38] is built on high-tension riffs, heavy enough to crush rather than tear apart (as on Kill'em All). We're in the midst of a genuine massacre. Its intensity is matched only by the death metal of Possessed; its extremism by the hyper-fast (and seemingly opposite) thrash of Slayer. It's the kind of track that seems to swallow the likes of Megadeth whole. "Orion" (Burton/Hetfield/Ulrich) [8:12] is the answer to the Lovecraftian "The Call of Ktulu": while it may not match its communicative peaks, it seems to even surpass it in orchestration, linking back to the undertones of "(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth" from which it progressively rises, now on rhythm, now on guitar flights that never seem satisfied with themselves (ranging from dreamlike slide passages to electric carnage).

On September 27, 1986, in Sweden, in a dawn accident involving the band's tour bus, Cliff Burton dies at the age of 24.

On October 28, Metallica hire Jason Newsted (Michigan, 1963, ex-Flotsam & Jetsam): colder and less communicative than Burton. Symbolically, we might say that Metallica's artistry died on that unfortunate Swedish morning. It would take Metallica 18 years (1986-2004) to release 5 albums of new material. Eighteen years of success and irrelevance.

On August 10, 1987, The 5.98 Ep – Garage Days Revisited is released (Top 30 in the US, Top 20 in the UK: it went gold in the US on December 7). It was conceived primarily as a commercial move. But in hindsight it's quite interesting. First, because it inaugurates, however unintentionally, post-metal. Indeed, at just twenty-five, Metallica had already said everything important they had to say. And with them, metal had, by 1987, largely already said what it had to say (thrash and speed metal, properly speaking, had long since run their course). Second, we find here, made concrete, virtually all the styles that made the Metallica phenomenon possible, as well as Hetfield and Ulrich's deep (bordering on obsessive), broad and far from obvious knowledge of rock history. It consists of 5 covers (and the concept of "quotation" is the very essence of the "post-" prefix, whether in metal, rock, or art and culture in general): from the NWOBHM of Diamond Head's 1981 ("Helpless"), the thrash of Holocaust's 1983 ("The Small Hours"), the techno-dark of Killing Joke's 1980 ("The Wait"), the hard rock of Budgie's 1971 ("Crash Course in Brain Surgery"), and the hardcore of Misfits' 1982 ("Last Caress/Green Hell"). This Ep would influence grunge in general and Nirvana and Alice In Chains in particular.

…And Justice for All(1988): 65:10, 9 brani. Produttore: Flemming Rasmussen.

This is the album of worldwide success for twenty-five-year-olds who had already been on the road for at least five years (in 1988 it reached No. 6 on the Billboard chart, then went gold and platinum in the US). A success that mirrors artistic sterility. Metallica had said everything (and it was a great deal) they had to say. Now they simply perform their parts, like extraordinarily well-paid street musicians, for bored office workers or oblivious kids who want to enjoy what MTV passes off as heavy metal and, the ultimate sacrilege, from the comfort of their own living room.

…And Justice for All is an album so impeccable and so outward-facing that it ends up saying nothing. It isn't even the best metal album of the year (the competition was fierce on several fronts: Death, Death Angel, Jane's Addiction, Queensryche), although of course it's on the podium, and although, had any other band made it, it would rightly have been called a masterpiece. This isn't meant as a complaint, nor as an attempt to be unfair to a band that, on its fourth album and after so many masterpieces, still presses on down its own path, more or less without frills or too many compromises. It's simply a statement of fact. Hetfield himself would later admit the half-misstep of this album, which, as they say in the trade, "doesn't sound right." Too long, too indigestible, too monotonous: it's excess without, seemingly, substance. The records after '91 won't even register.

The masterpieces, of which there was once an embarrassment of riches, are now down to just one, albeit a remarkable one: the instrumental "To Live Is to Die" (Burton/Hetfield/Ulrich) [9:48], dedicated to Burton's memory. It weds the most genuine theatricality (read: power) of the inspired years with a melodic, acoustic aftertaste of infinite despair that, now beyond history and the world, seems to pin us alone before the void. Out of generosity I'll add one more track to that solitary masterpiece: "Dyers Eve" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:12]. It's so frantic and loose-limbed that it ultimately draws you in: another "Battery," with the hope that two drummers make for twice the fun. Not only that: it features an interesting, heart-on-sleeve vocal from Hetfield. It deserves applause. Two rounds, in fact, given how overlooked it's been.

The other tracks.

“Blackened” (Hetfield/Newsted/Ulrich) [6:40], ennesimo esordio ad alta tensione modellato su “Fight Fire With Fire”.

"…And Justice for All" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [9:44] is yet another epic (and the social epic is the worst kind), yet another recipe, yet another trick, but this time an unwelcome one, drawn from "The Four Horsemen," "Ride the Lightning," "Master of Puppets." "Eye Of The Beholder" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:25] is a "Damage, Inc." turned into mush. "One" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [7:24] is the MTV single, complete with video (No. 35 in America, No. 13 in the UK): a shame it's an embarrassing rehash of "Fade To Black," made all the more saccharine by the obligatory Vietnam-pacifist pretext. A total con (people cried tears of emotion, when they should have cried tears of pity!).

"The Shortest Straw" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:35] is a score of impeccable heavy-metal execution: is it worth a yawn?

"Harvester of Sorrow" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:42] revives the fortunes somewhat, but we've already heard this in "Creeping Death" (which itself bordered on "not sounding right"). "The Frayed Ends of Sanity" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [7:40], for all it runs on a synthetic device, is the best thing among these interminable, tedious serpents of a record: it's hard to digest, but for once it seems worth the indigestion.

Metallica(1991): 62:16, 12 brani. Produttore Bob Rock (Mötley Crüe, The Cult, Cher, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Bryan Adams ).

With this album, Metallica become stars, on a par with Madonna or Springsteen.

Musically, we change genre for the third time: after speed/thrash and heavy metal comes a sort of metal-rock. A metal that is more convoluted than baroque. More constrained by the tempos, dynamics, and averageness of mid-tempo rock than free in the metal-suite sense. Despite the man who has grown richest off Metallica's back, a vile old fox with the artistic spirit of a pig, Bob Rock, the band still manages to deliver one last performance worthy of itself. Shedding its metal skin, it looks to the future by tackling, still in heavy terms, the old rock song or, to be precise, country song. The result is a work more unique than rare in the band's history, neither hard rock nor rock, but as if a metal band were covering Johnny Cash songs. We're in the grunge era, and Metallica feel closer to that — which is, after all, American culture — than to the fanaticism (admittedly more artistic) of Scandinavian or European metal in general, death, grind, gothic (from Carcass to Entombed). After all, grunge is this generation's equivalent of hardcore, and the kinship between Metallica and hardcore has always been obvious. After all, Hetfield has gone on record calling Nirvana the last true rock band.

Despite Bob Rock, despite Michael Kamen's symphony orchestra, despite the five music videos, despite having Elektra fork out a million dollars for the recording sessions alone, despite the concert in Moscow in front of 300,000 people (incidentally, Metallica are among the most heavily touring rock bands of all time: they must have spent three-quarters of their lives on the road!), Metallica — among the general public their most famous album (No. 1 in the US, UK, Canada, Australia; No. 5 in Italy; top 5 across Europe) — remains an album of great quality.

The masterpieces.

"The Unforgiven" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:26] is rhetorical, orchestrated, cut from the same cloth as "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)." But when there's sincerity of feeling, it shows, it's felt: in the overflowing riffs, in Hetfield's nostalgic, shipwrecked vocal (which even drops to a whisper), there's no way not to find something to be moved by. Over a slender, vaguely Latin acoustic base grows Hetfield's gigantic confessional psalmody, in which everyone can't help but see themselves and let themselves be led by the hand, the song playing like a contemplation of every life past or future. The track is also a kind of homage to Morricone's scores, revealing the extremely wide range of musical possibilities Metallica possess and what can rightly be called their classicism; classicism not only because they're metal classics, but also because it's achieved through harmonic constructions modeled on classical music. In 1992 in the US the single reaches No. 35 (selling half a million copies). "Wherever I May Roam" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:42] shows an Eastern mask behind which lurks a mournful face etched by violence upon violence, memory upon memory. Here melody prevails over harmony. Confession over understanding. Weeping over words. Brimming with existence, oblivious to any social or stoic conditioning, it is, deep down, a love song that finds comfort in the most committed vocal performance Hetfield has ever given. In 1992 the single reaches No. 82 in the USA.

The other tracks.

"Enter Sandman" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:29] shows how this isn't the "black" album just because of its cover: it's dark metal made by rockers (the result is an existential or country metal, the opposite of so-called dark or black metal). The single (with video) reached No. 16 in America and sold a million copies. The track also shows how, along with the music, Metallica's subject matter has changed: now more bourgeois, less apocalyptic, in no way offensive or scandalous: rather than attacking, they complain, staging horror without frightening themselves. The result is a refinement and roundness of sound (everything smoothed out, at times heavy but never deafening or jarring) unknown to the band before. "Sad but True" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:24] is a reined-in, titanic regurgitation: more Melvins than Motorhead. Not a shadow of thrash metal here. If anything, what resurfaces is the dark new wave of the early Eighties (with a synthesizer it could pass for an Ultravox track). This will be the heavy metal of Metallica's future. Heavy metal, here, well made and deeply felt. In 1992, the single is No. 98 in America.

"Holier Than Thou" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [3:47] picks up the pace just slightly, though it's more disorienting for its arrangements than for the song itself.

"Don't Tread on Me" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [3:59] shows that Metallica are no longer speed or thrash, just heavy: rhythm guitars from which hard rock solos or rock melodies take flight. "Through the Never" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [4:01], with drumming that Motorhead would mock, keeps unchanged the contemplative, painterly aurea mediocritas of the whole album, which seems to have no weak points.

"Nothing Else Matters" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:29] is, along with "One" (to which it is nonetheless superior), Metallica's only blatantly commercial concession. A true ballad was something Metallica had never attempted before. Here it is, this semi-acoustic piece. Setting aside that framing, the lyrics are more than dignified (indeed, rare for rock) and the ballad stands out for not being about love, but about despair (ultimately nihilistic). The single reaches No. 34 in the US in 1992, but will become a worldwide smash thanks to MTV. "Of Wolf And Man" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [4:16] is another (extremely heavy) ride for the new Metallica bulldozer. All weight and suffocation, no edge or acidity. We've gone from jagged shapes to spherical geometries.

"The God That Failed" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:05], arriving right at the point where you decide whether the record is boring or not (an hour in by now), rescues things with various devices and a form that is, all things considered, dazzling (that is, deep in desolation). Perhaps rock had never before heard tracks like this. Somewhere between Melvins, Johnny Cash and Joy Division.

"My Friend of Misery" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:47] sublimates the funereal pathos (no longer martial) of this elegiac album. Its self-pitying lament is a lesson learned from Nick Cave. "The Struggle Within" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [3:51] sounds musically like just another '90s track (from Machine Head to Fear Factory, bands to which it opens the door), but Hetfield's vocal pulls it into a dimension that is the opposite of self-indulgence or a life lived in metal: it's metal in order to live (in that sense, pop).

Load (1996): 14 tracks, 74:59. Producer: Bob Rock.

After '91 (the band's average age is 28), Metallica no longer have an artistic life. Colossal tours, memorable live shows, impeccable technique, a sound as stratospheric as their fee. Five years go by: now they're men in their thirties with the strength, with the arms to work, not as much as they'd worked up to that point (15 years), but twice as much. They could aim for 60 years and a place among the longest-lived bands in rock history. But those 5 years of silence already reveal what was feared: an unparalleled, irremediable sterility. Now, more for themselves than for the money, more to challenge themselves than to bask in what they've achieved, they climb in search of themselves: never uncertain about this, always sure of and devoted to displaying their own existential dismay, it's the moment when even that no longer says anything and can no longer say anything. Metallica agonize, taking refuge in 75 excessive, interminable minutes of music: music that is that rock-metal developed since '91, here contextualized not in the dark side of the self and the world, but in neo-western, Southern-gangster atmospheres. It's the metal equivalent of Nick Cave at his most metropolitan and self-satisfied blues. The band changes stylistic and thematic approach for the fourth time. The album is a contrived dusting-off, now of the violent exoticism of "Wherever I May Roam", now of the symphonic sweep of "The Unforgiven", now of the crushing heaviness of "Don't Tread On Me". Unparalleled verbosity, cathedrals in the desert, immense baroque constructions with no foundation: that's what results. A work harder to endure than to understand. It shares the merits and flaws of certain Tom Waits sideshows. Fascinating too (especially if it were intentional!), but ultimately indigestible and sterile, not because its subject is sterility, but because it is its powerless victim. It's an …And Justice for All for the era and sound of Metallica, exceeding, in the negative, all the extremes that were then justified and bearable.

Metallica, the band that more than any other, by inventing heavy metal (which derives from hardcore more than hard rock), freed rock from the blues, now survive by rehashing the Rolling Stones. The Motorhead model has been replaced by that of Nick Cave (the myth of Hetfield's maturity).

In an era when metal, long since exhausted, believes itself renewed only by oxymoronically exaggerating its own brutality (the leading genres of '96 are, on one side, death and gothic, on another progressive, and on another the street metal of Korn and Deftones), Metallica only exaggerate their own bulk, ultimately sounding not like metal but like an expressionistic, deformed, fused rock 'n' roll.

Live, in practice, the new songs are barely acknowledged.

In 1996 Load reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart.

The songs, none of which is better than another, because they are descriptive and quantitative rather than meaningful and qualitative.

"Ain't My Bitch" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:04] already says it all about the album: an indigestible meal that imposes itself, and only imposes itself, through its own heaviness and bulk (which are, moreover, harmless and incapable of landing a blow). "2 X 4" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:28] is downright Stones-like in its kitsch machismo and hedonism. "The House Jack Built" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:39] wallows in a sexually tinged sadism with great atmosphere, but an end in itself. All that's metal about it are the amplifiers.

"Until It Sleeps" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [4:30] was one of the two main singles (No. 10 in the US): Metallica's melodic rock-metal here hits the mark, however faintly, offering a mournful jingle that at other volumes could pass for the Byrds. The rhythm section accompanies it symphonically: no speed, no thrash here; the guitars dust off the '70s (from Grateful Dead to Lynyrd Skynyrd): the result is an overall original and unusual sound, though ultimately of little value. "King Nothing" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:28] wanders, drinking in a boredom that kills it. Potentially a desert epic; in fact, the effect of a cowboy in slippers.

"Hero of the Day" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [4:22] is folk-metal. Folk: Hetfield's other great passion. A Hetfield whose sincerity in his patriotic, atavistic sentiment must be acknowledged.

"Bleeding Me" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [8:18] leaves the vast prairies to return to urban delirium: even '70s keyboards make an appearance. Still half soft, half heavy, with the speed of a pachyderm dancing on the spot. "Cure" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [4:54] plays at the blues, indulging in the most transfiguring, womb-like undertones of a trashy, mafia-ridden America (see Tom Waits). "Poor Twisted Me" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [4:00] is an exercise for guitars that, mostly rhythmic, originally no longer ramble on with solos but with mere distortions, hints.

"Wasting My Hate" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [3:57] is an adagio onto which the jackhammer of four cowboys grafts itself in a moment of reflection. "Mama Said" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:19] is a country revival (the equivalent, in this western setting, of "Nothing Else Matters") perfectly executed and sincere (the other single that was huge at the time) and perfectly futile, swallowed up by history.

"Thorn Within" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:51] is yet another pill of deflagration and static, imploded power. They complain about having to complain. "Ronnie" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:17] is the Rolling Stones filtered through the crudeness of AC/DC, via a vile chalice steeped in the most perverse roots of the American continent.

"The Outlaw Torn" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [9:52] is the peak of the torture: if you'd wanted to switch off the stereo half an hour ago, now there are no more excuses. Yet, by dusting off, in its own (naive) way, a whole series of elements of the most frontier-like American culture, between paganism and puritanism, between death penalties and the mafia, between metropolis and desert, it takes upon itself all the preceding tracks that had each tried to illuminate one of these aspects, epically summing up the essence of the album.

Reload (1997): 13 tracks, 75:56. Producer: Bob Rock.

Considered an album made from the leftovers of its predecessor (for whose sessions Metallica reportedly had 150 minutes of material ready), and released the year after the one it risked being mistaken for (see the title and production timeline of Metallica), in the end it turns out to be intrinsically different. The shape is still that of Metallica's rock-metal, but compared to Load, it moves from a reflective, world-weary, lived-in fabric, somewhere between prairie and metropolis, to atmospheres that are now more carefree, now more apocalyptic, and in any case never focused on narrative but torn between rock n' roll fun and epic seriousness.

Load and Reload are no different in value from And Justice For All. Except that while that album indulged in mannerism on the heavy metal of Master Of Puppets, these indulge in mannerism on the rock-metal of Metallica. Metallica did an excellent job in 1991 because they changed genre. Too bad that afterwards they would no longer be able to change genre, having exhausted every possible spectrum. Hence the mediocrity of Load and Reload. In 1997 it reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart.

"Fuel" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [4:29] is perhaps the first purely garage-rock track by Metallica: the heaviness of Metallica and the bluesy indigestion of Load are converted into a solid, but frivolous, dance-hall harangue, hedonistic rather than committed. The single would flood the charts. It really is just rock n' roll. "The Memory Remains" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [4:39] converts the earlier stylistic devices into an overall highly evocative and moving composition: a dejected, underground epic with Marianne Faithfull playing grandma to the new Rolling Stones, without even hedonistic values. The video and single for this track decisively relaunched Metallica among the new generation of Italian fans.

"Devil's Dance" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:18] finally injects some grit into the indecipherable languor of Load. The feeling is still that of a giant with feet of clay. It also veers into collegiate atmospheres along the lines of "L'attimo fuggente" (Dead Poets Society). If nothing else, with more conviction.

"The Unforgiven II" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:36], of which an extremely long video was also released, speaks for itself: it's the country version of the other one. And if that other one hadn't existed, this would be the best track on the record. That says it all. "Better Than You" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:21] starts out from "Sad But True" and arrives at nothing more than its own self-satisfaction.

"Slither" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:13] tries to whip up an acid novelty track that drags the Kinks (whose riffs, along with those of the Who, are the biggest influence on latter-day Metallica) into the nuclear age. This one, though, is contemplated with sentiment (the tone isn't unlike Soundgarden's grunge).

"Carpe Diem Baby" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:12] doesn't even boast the rock-solid structure of the previous rant, and hides behind a chorus that, for a moment, in Hetfield's engaged delivery, grabs you, only to bore you the next. "Bad Seed" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [4:05] (a tribute to Nick Cave) is an indigestible Deep Purple-esque encyclopedia that finds neither transcendence nor immanence. Violence at its most impure stage. "Where the Wild Things Are" (Hetfield/Newsted/Ulrich) [6:52] turns the bluesy dawdling of Load into something atmospheric: then it lunges, crude and disreputable, into a roar as primordial as it is post-mortem. The tone, somewhere between seductive, deathly and synthetic, has a certain vital value (or a certain value worth dying for). "Prince Charming" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [6:04] finds no shelter from the tedium of pure and equally pointless rock riffing. Metallica even seem to revel and bask in themselves and in their own music, no longer thrash but trash: and above all, which is perhaps worse, in a sex, drugs and rock n' roll lifestyle. "Low Man's Lyric" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [7:36] is a creaky progressive country number in the vein of "Mama Said", retaining its rhetoric but not its appeal.

"Attitude" (Hetfield/Ulrich) [5:16] is a herd of pachyderms you can shoot at and be certain to hit, given how much space they take up. "Fixxxer" (Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich) [8:15] is so abrasive and anti-aesthetic that it's hard to believe it wasn't made with full awareness (a bit like the music of the Swans, which is ugly because that's how it's meant to be, and that's art): and so it becomes the least-worst track of the bunch; the one that also marks the shift from the pastoral blues of Load to the nuclear or industrial blues of Reload. After the Nazi nihilism of Kill'em All, the humanitarian nihilism of Ride The Lightning, the existential nihilism of Metallica, we arrive at a kind of "female sex" nihilism that is nothing more than the shameless arrogance of the rock n' roll or blues of the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin (the latter especially recalled in "Fixxxer").

Garage, Inc. 1998. Produced by Bob Rock.

This mammoth covers album carries significant historical weight in rock, something critics failed to notice, limiting themselves to denouncing the commercial aspect of the operation. Firstly, through the cover, through mannerism, it announces the end of both rock and metal, which have nothing left to do but rehash tradition — or better, as is done here, rather than hiding it behind pseudo-songs, laying it bare by revisiting old tracks. Secondly, thanks to Metallica's global popularity, it allowed, on one hand, a whole series of historic bands to reach a wider audience and, as a result, to be rediscovered through their forgotten original material (hence all the reissues that followed to meet the new demand); and on the other, it gave thousands of listeners, young and not so young, the chance to learn about fundamental, highly significant bands they would otherwise never have paid any attention to. Finally, Garage, Inc. once again reveals all the ingredients of heavy metal: from hardcore to hard rock.

Incidentally, Metallica, being great historians of rock, choose, for their covers, one more memorable and forgotten track after another. After 1991, in rock, Garage, Inc. deserves far more appreciation than Vitalogy.

Discharge, Diamond Head, Mercyful Fate, Holocaust, Budgie, Blitzkrieg, Anti-Nowhere League, Sweet Savage, are all more or less great bands brought back to life thanks to Metallica. But even Motorhead, Misfits, Killing Joke and Thin Lizzy get to catch their breath thanks to a renewed interest. In 1998 Garage, Inc. reached No. 2 on the Billboard chart.

S&M (produced by Bob Rock) is a squalid 1999 live album with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, where you can smell the full stench of American rhetoric. The album would reach No. 2 on the Billboard chart.

In the early 2000s, the mediocre and neurotic Newsted would leave Metallica (for Voivod and Echobrain); replaced by an outwardly peculiar character (he looks like an aborigine dressed as a ska-punk) with the uncertain task of injecting new life into Metallica's stale atmosphere: it's Robert Trujillo (ex Infectious Grooves, Suicidal Tendencies and Ozzy Osbourne).

St. Anger (2003). Produced by Bob Rock.

If the last few Metallica albums could at best earn indifference, this one is downright nauseating. It even dabbles in nu-metal, the last pseudo-gimmick of Metallica's most bastard offspring. This record, which deserves nothing but infamy, is the first truly negative outing of Metallica's career. The fear is that it won't be the last. They even brought in Bob Rock (by now the band's fifth member) to co-write part of the material: the worst of producers predictably turns out to be the worst of composers. With nothing left to say and nothing left to do, all that's left for Metallica is to tarnish their own legacy and secure a number 1 on Billboard (see the tragicomic singles "St. Anger", "Frantic" and "The Unnamed Feeling").

Death Magnetic (2008) presents itself as Metallica's attempt to "go back to their old selves", to win back the diehard fans who had cried betrayal over the previous record; in practice, it's a backward-looking thrash-metal album that was already old on arrival. Metallica serve up exactly the same music as And Justice for All and the "Black Album", only blander, weaker, and lacking the accessibility of the songs on their 1991 bestseller.

The record's main flaw is that there isn't a single song that truly deserves to be called one: the tracks are assemblages of old-school thrash riffs that don't even try to cohere into proper songs, coming off as pedantic and repetitive. Add to that an empty, inexpressive vocal performance, the bland and clumsy drumming of a Lars Ulrich at his historic worst, and tasteless touches - like the melodic opening of "That Was Just Your Life", interrupted by the drums in the most banal way imaginable - and you get a useless, irritating record.

All that Death Magnetic has to offer is some headbanger-friendly metal sludge ("Cyanide"), creaky old-style power ballads ("The Day That Never Comes", yet another rehash of "Fade to Black") and shameless callbacks to their own past ("The Unforgiven III").

Perhaps in search of eternal youth and a rebellious spirit that can hardly still be alive and kicking at 50, after thirty years of career, Metallica still try to surprise themselves and the rock audience alike. Thus comes the collaboration with Lou Reed that takes shape on the album Lulu, a rock opera conceived thematically by the New York singer-songwriter based on the two plays written in the early twentieth century by the German Frank Wedekind. The music is handled by the Frisco combo, who build a heavy wall of sound that's anything but imaginative, but is all in all fitting for the story being told. It's a heavy rock record that may be unremarkable, but is ultimately well-crafted and effective. All the while, both media and fans remain baffled.

Eight years on from Death Magnetic, Metallica return with Hardwired... To Self-Destruct, an album once again nostalgic and deferential toward their glorious past. Twelve tracks, seventy-seven minutes built on a series of granite-hard riffs, always pushed to the max, free of the disease of technicality for its own sake. Hetfield keeps the volume at deafening levels throughout, constantly quoting himself and running through his entire back catalogue.

Nothing new here, save for the desire to still be around, to wistfully bear witness to their own past rather than break new ground for the metal of the future. But Metallica have already broken plenty of new ground, some of it frankly rocky terrain; so they can afford this sort of thrash revival. Part Kill 'Em All, part Master Of Puppets and part Black Album, the new record tells us the four horsemen are still among us, nostalgic but very much alive.

Confirming their urge to look backwards, Ulrich and co. return to performing with the San Francisco Symphony, now conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, for two event evenings also set to hit 3,700 cinemas as a concert film. Essentially it's a rerun of what we heard on the original S&M, hence the name S&M2, with numerous overlapping moments that turn the listen into a mere exercise in comparison for die-hards, hunting for differences that are far from striking. The orchestra's contribution to Metallica's dense songs is often secondary, when not simply noisy or superfluous, so much so that in the long twenty-two-track, 143-minute setlist there's a moment given over entirely to the orchestra alone: the scant four minutes of Prokofiev's "Scythian Suite, Opus 20 II: The Enemy God And The Dance Of The Dark Spirits". Little changes, though: Metallica will remain in the pantheon of rock and metal even if they spend the next twenty years releasing nothing but superfluous symphonic-metal live albums like this one.

For the thirtieth anniversary of their self-titled album, the San Francisco band gathered 53 alternate versions of those songs, performed by an impressive army of artists from every genre and every country, collected on The Metallica Blacklist. It runs four hours and five minutes, that is 245 minutes, in which Metallica essentially celebrate themselves through their many guests, so confident that this batch of thirty-year-old songs will interest you so much that you'll want to hear some of them in, say, 12 different versions, as happens with "Nothing Else Matters".

The proceeds from sales all go to charity, but you could just as easily skip a step and donate directly. Listening to all 53 tracks in full, on the other hand, can only be recommended to the band's die-hard fans. For everyone else, it's enough to pick and choose from the massive Spotify tracklist, led by your own curiosity. Afterwards, be warned, you might find yourself with an irresistible urge to go back and listen to the originals.

72 Seasons fully continues down the path laid out by Hardwired... To Self-Destruct, being almost a clone of it, with twelve predictable tracks, some of them quite intense, like the title track with a riff vaguely indebted to Master Of Puppets (as is the one in "Too Far Gone?"), plus Hammett's usual wah-wah, telling us about the 72 fundamental, formative seasons of our lives (those spanning birth to one's eighteenth year). The first single, "Lux Æterna", is a classic speed-metal cut recalling their debut album, while the most convincing track is perhaps "If Darkness Had A Son", with fairly dark-tinged lyrics, old-school riffs and guitar charges, and the kind of Temptation-worthy scream fit to shake stadiums.

We get to the twelfth track, "Inamorata", a full eleven minutes long. It would be the longest song in Metallica's entire discography, so one might think that this, finally, is where they wanted to do something more, perhaps attempt a new "One", a new "The Call of Ktulu" or a new "Orion". In reality, Metallica don't even try, and "Inamorata" is nothing but the same old soup stretched out to the eleven-minute mark.

For many fans of the band, this will pass as a record with a comfortingly familiar sound, and that will be enough. Personally, I still prefer the Metallica who sought out new paths, even the most ill-fated ones like "St. Anger" or the most unfairly maligned ones like "Lulu". Where there's a willingness to take risks, there's life; where there's only craftsmanship, boredom reigns unchallenged.

Contributions by Alessandro Nalon ("Death Magnetic"), Valerio D'Onofrio ("Hardwired... To Self-Destruct", "72 Seasons"), Antonio Silvestri ("S&M2", "The Metallica Blacklist")

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