Metallica - "72 Seasons"

I mean, what did we expect?

I honestly wasn’t certain how excited I was for this one. I mean, it’s fucking Metallica. Legitimate legends. But as bands age, they generally don’t age well. Which is why Iron Maiden’s last album was so goddamned mindblowing.

So, frankly, I wasn’t expecting much. (It’s safer that way)

And, to that end, Metallica have definitely beat my expectations.

This album is very reminiscent of “Death Magnetic” in sound and tone, but it doesn’t carry it as well. It’s been a while since I’ve given Death Magnetic a listen, but it was one of my favorite Metallica albums after it released (granted, I hadn’t listened through a whole ton of Metallica albums at the time). But this one feels much more thrashy than DM. It also has a much weaker throughline.

“72 Seasons” is meant to be a reflection on Hetfield’s (the vocalist) coming-of-age (at 4 seasons per year, that’s 18 years). Apparently he had a rough time of it. So, compared to Death Magnetic, which was this intensely metal analysis of mortality and the inevitability of the Reaper’s arrival, 72 Seasons comes off really fucking angsty. Which, for a band whose members are, currently, between the ages of 58-60…it’s weird.

That said, the songs are pretty solid, for the most part. Some, like “Screaming Suicide”, are incredibly repetitive. Others, like “Screaming Suicide”, lean further into the teen angst.

I didn’t really like “Screaming Suicide”. Other songs had one of those flaws, but that track had both, and by the third listen, I was done with it.

BUT, there are tracks like “If Darkness Had a Son”, which sounds very much like classic Metallica. “Inamorata”, the 11-minute finale, calls back hard to “My Friend of Misery”, but is otherwise lackluster - both as a long-form track and as an album closer, as it has no dynamic variance to give it any memorability. The instrumental on its latter half is decent, but the melody is basic and there are no hooks, of any sort, to speak of. It feels like the album just kind of sputters out at the end with 11 wasted minutes.

Overall, the album is good. But it definitely isn’t great - some tracks are great, but too many are just meh or outright disappointing. In the end, this is just another letdown in a series of letdowns this year. 2023 has not started very strongly.

Rating: Green