Back in April of last year, Metallica released their eleventh studio album, 72 Seasons. Not only did I not buy it (or even stream it), but I have no recollection of ever even hearing the first single (the ridiculously titled “Lux Æterna”). If I’m being honest, I cannot say I’ve given a great deal of thought about Metallica since the release of… gosh, I don’t know … maybe 1997’s Reload. I think I just concluded, at some point, that I’d amassed all the Metallica records that I’d ever need. In retrospect, I have no regrets about that, as what material of theirs they released in the wake of Reload that I did hear failed to really impress me.
Suffice to say, this was not always the case. As I’ve laboriously alluded to several times on this blog over the years (most floridly here, I guess), I bought Ride the Lightning, the band’s second album, as a high school senior in 1984 based solely on the fact that on the back cover, guitarist Kirk Hammett was depicted sporting a Discharge t-shirt. I had not heard a single note off of it. But I figured that if these guys liked the bands on their t-shirts like Discharge, GBH and the Misfits (all big faves of mine), they must be on to something. Happily, I wasn’t wrong.
Pairing the adrenalized sprint of the hardcore punk bands extolled on their t-shirts with the signature heft of proper heavy metal (considerably weightier than most of the NWOBHM … look it up … bands of the time), Metallica – during that era – was this legitimately groundbreaking terror squad of iconoclasts, giddily upending trendy convention in pursuit of their finely distilled amalgam that was credibly re-defining the genre (alongside bands like Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth, but also droves of other, lesser-celebrated outfits, to say nothing of forebears like Motorhead and Venom). Metallica’s particular variant of the form, however, was especially realized and arguably the most impactful, compared to all their contemporaries (I’m sure Slayer fans will beg to vociferously differ). It’s really no accident that they rose to prominence faster than many of their peers.
Even their big breakout album in 1991 – the eponymous, Spinal Tap-alluding “Black Album” – was still excellent, even if it largely eschewed the roaring locomotive pace of their previous work. It suddenly made them household names, and there was simply no going back.
After that, however, to my mind, they got a bit lost. While many were shocked by their “new direction” with 1996’s Load (please, people… haircuts don’t matter), I was encouraged by their impetus to branch out, and I still like quite a few songs on that record. By Reload a year later, though, it seemed like everything that had initially drawn me to the band had been largely jettisoned. They were also reaching a level of fame and media saturation that continued to irrevocably housebreak their earlier mystique. In a nutshell, they were becoming as pop-culturally ubiquitous and gimmick-friendly as, say, U2. This was never what I needed from them. As such, I stopped dutifully picking up their albums (in much the same way I’d basically abandoned U2, after years of similarly following them).
Here in 2024, Metallica is still a going concern (as, for that matter, is U2), but the band seems as far removed from the cutting edge as can be imagined. Not only are they basically a lumbering dinosaur, but “rock itself” – in the minds of those who give a fuck about the zeitgeist – has been relegated to the back burner. Despite their arguable irrelevance, they’ll allegedly be playing around here in August of 2024, but I already saw them in 1988, 1992 and 1997. I wish them well, but it’s highly unlikely that I’ll be attending.
So, why am I bothering to discuss them here and now?
Well, as alluded in the post from the other day, 2024 is revealing itself to be one mean son of a bitch. My mother and her boyfriend of forty-someodd years, Jimbo, were about to begin their yearly migration down to a rented cottage in Florida. Jim has COPD, y’see, which makes breathing especially difficult in the cold weather … as if being 89 wasn't difficult enough, already. They normally spend most of their time out at my mom’s house in Quogue (on Long Island). They were both ready to make the trip – first from Quogue to New York, where Jimbo has a small apartment, and then down to Florida – when Jim suddenly contracted bacterial pneumonia. When he seemed well enough to travel, they made the trip into the city. Somehow, along the way, both my mother and already-sickly Jimbo contracted COVID. So, all of sudden, both of them are incredibly sick and sequestered in Jim’s tiny one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. As such, I was suddenly recruited to aid and abet their survival and hopeful recovery, a mission which found me literally darting around Manhattan to secure them groceries, medical supplies, and prescriptions to – ideally -- safely deliver them through this fraught sickly period. I’ve been doing so pretty much since last Friday afternoon.
For a reason I can no longer recall, during one particularly testy sortie wherein I was trying to prize a pair of compact humidifiers for them, I dialed up the entirety of Master of Puppets -- inarguably Metallica’s finest hour – to score my attack, the breakneck stride of songs like “Battery,” “Damage Inc,” the sprawling title track and the furious thrash of the track below providing the frenetic soundtrack to my ducking and weaving through the sluggish human cattle of the Upper West Side whilst executing my provision-procuring duties. I found the bleakly bracing “Disposable Heroes” to be an especially galvanizing force to propel me through the stressful tasks of the day. From there, I moved onto a live rendition of “Creeping Death” from Live Shit: Binge & Purge which may have pushed me a little over the edge, being that I couldn’t stop myself from zealously chanting, through gritted teeth, DIE… DIE… DIE… DIE.., much to my fellow pedestrians’ pronounced alarm, during that morbid anthem’s stomping middle-eight.
If you need some sonic inspiration during your next stressy chore, you could always do worse than classic Metallica. Thank me later.
CODA: Mom and Jimbo aren't out of the woods just yet (and not yet in Florida), but are, so far, feeling a little bit better.
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