Review Summary: Too long without any substance to the songs whatsoever
1 of 11 thought this review was well writtenThis album is painfully mediocre. From the mediocre ***ing guitar riffs to the annoying barking that James Hetfield uses in a monotone throughout this entire release, everything is a little too average to what half the ***ing metal heads will have one believe.
Album opener Battery spends too long dicking around with its clean intro but after this manages to prove that Metallica are at their best when they are playing three thousand beats per minute. This is the fastest song a Metallica fan would have heard to date were they listening to the albums chronologically, and it really does kick ass, with a few absolutely killer riffs and some pissed off lyrics. This is thrash ***ing metal, and the speed expected is there, being an intense song.
The title track is half a good song, with an annoying crappy clean middle section, but contains the most memorable opening in thrash ***ing metal. The lyrics deal with drugs and are decently well written, although not quite poetic, with James Hetfield's angry manly voice echoing the pain of the people it speaks about and speaks to. This, however, is the last good song for a while, and the last pure thrash ***ing metal song until Disposable Heroes.
The Thing That Should Not Be is an overly long piece of doom metal rubbish that dicks around with the same *** riffs for eight minutes, and Welcome Home Sanitarium may have the worst ballad subject ever-breaking out of the ***ing loony bin. This is a recycled version of Fade To Black without half the emotion nor the actual talent backing it up. Bleh, this sucks hard ones.
Leper Messiah and Orion are two painfully long, forgettable songs. Disposable Heroes is half a good song, but goes on way too long without enough in the way of musical differences to be anything more than an average, overly long thrash ***ing metal song. Damage Inc is a speedy thrasher to close the album, similar to Battery except that the opening is even more annoying, being random guitar noises with an effects pedal distorting them even more, and does nothing to make this song memorable. Every song on this album is longer than five minutes, and yet a lot of them do not need to be, which is the most annoying thing about this album. Gah! Each and every ***ing song could be a wee bit shorter were the people behind them a little bit smarter.
This album is raped repeatedly and then killed by the fact it is billed up as being one of the best thrash metal releases of all time and yet it really is not. Each song is too long without anywhere near enough musical progression across it to be more than a piss poor mockery of a great thrash album. Not to be a negetive nelly, but the vocals truly are the worst in thrash metal, being a monotonous bark that abandons the crazy ***ing screeching from James on the previous two albums. This is overhyped and overrated bullcrap that really does not merit the time spent on it. Cut the songs down and it would be a great release.
