Metallica - 72 Seasons (New Album April 2023)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u-7rWKnVVo

Metallica has confirmed the title and release date of its forthcoming 12th studio album: 72 Seasons will be available April 14, 2023 via the band’s own Blackened Recordings. Produced by Greg Fidelman with founding members James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, and clocking in at over 77 minutes, the 12-track album is Metallica’s first full length collection of new material since 2016’s Hardwired…To Self-Destruct.

Speaking on the concept of the album title, James Hetfield said: “72 seasons. The first 18 years of our lives that form our true or false selves. The concept that we were told ‘who we are’ by our parents. A possible pigeonholing around what kind of personality we are. I think the most interesting part of this is the continued study of those core beliefs and how it affects our perception of the world today. Much of our adult experience is reenactment or reaction to these childhood experiences. Prisoners of childhood or breaking free of those bondages we carry.”

Track listing:

72 Seasons
Shadows Follow
Screaming Suicide
Sleepwalk My Life Away
You Must Burn!
Lux Æterna
Crown of Barbed Wire
Chasing Light
If Darkness Had a Son
Too Far Gone?
Room of Mirrors
Inamorata

Of course it comes wrapped in the worst album cover of their career, and I'm including Lulu:

https://www.metallica.com/on/demandware.static/-/Sites-Metallica-Library/default/dwb70f835e/images/releases/72-seasons.jpg

*shrug*

Lulu has a great cover

Lux Aeterna rips. Cynics be damned.

Lulu has a great cover

Yeah, and it's a great album too. Lou Reed was a genius. *eyeroll emoji* *shooting-self-in-face emoji* (if there isn't one, there should be)

Xpost Wow. Yes, it's fucking great.

A little NWOBHM flavor

I dunno, I think this is a better album cover than their last one.

Song is nice, kind of a Motorhead vibe

xpost Yeah, seriously

I dunno, I think this is a better album cover than their last one.

The Hardwired cover was also bad. But at least bad in a dumb metal-dudes way. This one looks like a "lol what if the Minions were in a monster-baby horror movie?" Twitter meme.

was hoping 72 Seasons meant they were going to cover songs featuring the word Seasons, like "Seasons in the Sun" or "Seasons in the Abyss"

I don't even buy physical albums anymore so if the album cover is a literal dog turd, it's w/e to me.

though tbh I will probably buy a physical of this

(I buy digital albums, I don't just stream everything )

xxp: Vivaldi's The Four Seasons

This is all extremely Metallica, in an ideal way

Those drums are gridded up to fuck, Lars is gonna struggle to be that tight when they tour again.

I mean, that's the story of his life. he's always a little sloppy live but it's fine

I guess it's appropriate since it's an album about childhood by a band of 60-year-olds, but man, those are some anachronistic toys.

Not even mentioning the gun or knife or whatevers.

I still wanna know how Lars and Dave smoked hash through a hole in the ground.

cover art looks like some post hardcore math rocky thing which would be cool

Lol, good luck riding those kick drums, Lars. Prepare to cue the sample.

I dunno, this sounds pretty generic boogie metal, like Racer X or something, but I guess I don't mind.

My super Metallica-fan coworker sez: "Sounds well produced, isn't out of their depth, little bit of New Wave of British Heavy Metal inspiration"

Hetfield's vocal is pitch-corrected to such a degree it's actually distracting.

Lol yeah that long-held high note in the chorus is really pushing it

This is ok, not an embarrassment and at this stage in Metallica's career "not an embarrassment" is pretty much an acceptable state of affairs. I note from Wikipedia that James' son is a drummer, maybe it's time they took him out on tour as Lars-backup as a precursor to shifting the line-up entirely to their offspring once the rest of them come of age.

Greg Fidelman has an interesting engineering/mixing history, Adele, Toploader, Slipknot, Slayer, The Gossip, Supergrass, Neil Diamond

Drums so quantized it sounds like 80s ZZ Top

hardwired was fuckin great, really looking forward to this

If Darkness Had a Son

lmao at this song title though

ok have now heard "lux œterna" and yes doing a straight up throwback to their roots feels great, sounds good on them, fuckin' hyped for the record

The Autotune on James's voice has been really annoying for years. They even used it heavily on S&M, he sounded so robotic

These guys are still making albums?

Nope just fake albums

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsS5nw-U0iU

consider: james without autotune

have zero interest in seeing these guys live but it's pretty, i dunno, neat? enterprising? something? that their upcoming tour is a 2-night ticket type of deal

Cocktails and canapés with Metallica

I feel like the cover would be kind of cool if they took off the big M in the top right hand corner

why'd they break the crib

The instrumental part is actually very satisfying but everything about the vocals from the sound to the melody (minus the part where he says the track name which is actually p good) is dogshit

Cocktails and canapés with Metallica

https://i.redd.it/mi9my1snwrr21.jpg

I liked Kirk's solo in the new song

Going on the cover art, I’m looking forward to some ‘03 Dizzee Rascal influenced NWOBHM bangers

Fix up-ah
Whoao-oh look sharp-ah

The tones are pretty solid but it's still somehow dorky

It's probably Scientology propaganda

There's a very long and well-written for what it is profile of Metallica in the new issue of The New Yorker. It must have taken forfuckingever to write — there are quotes from all four current bandmembers, Dave Mustaine, Jason Newsted, Scott Ian, Ozzy Osbourne and probably some people I'm forgetting, and the writer (Amanda Petrusich) follows the band all over the place, to multiple concerts, rehearsals, and more — but the tone it takes, and its baked-in presumption that the New Yorker readership needs introducing to one of the five biggest bands on Earth, who would never sully their delicate shell-pink ears with rock and roll music, never mind heavy metal... it's kinda hilarious.

That’s the standard New Yorker tone, though… they’d write about Swiss cheese that way.

"This cheese has an unusual, remarkable feature: bubbles."

Not too bad, thought I caught a Diamond Head nod in the lyrics as well, makes sense given the NWOBHM vibe.

Yeah, it's actually cute how Hey alludes to "Lightning to the Nations", pretty much admitting that he's well aware of the resemblance to that track.

It must have taken forfuckingever to write

Amanda posted that it took a year.

The music is well crafted but unexciting. The vocals are goofy even for Het, lyrics are awful.

Like Hardwired, I'll listen to the new album twice and conclude it's ok.

I thought the New Yorker piece was pretty disappointing, tbh. She's a great writer, one of my favorites, but I was not convinced by the angle. Though I suppose a problem could be that in 2022, what the fuck are you even supposed to write about Metallica?

Like Hardwired, I'll listen to the new album twice and conclude it's ok.

St Anger was the first album I bought at midnight and put for sale on eBay at 2 am

They've pushed and pulled the fundamentals of the music around in various ways over the years, but I wonder quite what is there left to say when you more or less wrote the book with your first few records, been the biggest rock band, toured the world loads of times.

A collab record with Peter Brötzmann, Colin Stetson, or Yamantaka Eye would probably kick ass, but the fanbase would get all huffy and confused.

Lux Aeterna kinda rips? I loove how fast it is and i love Kirk’s solo. Soundwise to me it’s still in the same world as the last album, like they left it off bc too fast, but i guess i hear a little nwobhm in there too

idg what the title means or why theyre singing about it but i don’t think that it matters

the album cover looks pretty uh dumb to me but you can’t win them all

Bunch of assholes.

Xpost it's about the thread on I Love AFL

lol

mr veg and i were idly speculating on the album title & i was like well 72 divided by 4 is 18 maybe it’s like 18 albums and he was all maybe they mean concert seasons outdoor & stadium (cue me laughing and eyerolling)

then this from hetfield soooo i guess the meaning is “i’ve been doing a LOT of therapy”

72 seasons. The first 18 years of our lives that form our true or false selves. The concept that we were told ‘who we are’ by our parents. A possible pigeonholing around what kind of personality we are. I think the most interesting part of this is the continued study of those core beliefs and how it affects our perception of the world today. Much of our adult experience is reenactment or reaction to these childhood experiences. Prisoners of childhood or breaking free of those bondages we carry.
— James Hetfield (2022)

Prisoners probing possible personality pigeonholing.

can't kill 'em all.

:(

I don't like the new lyrics to "Dyer's Eve"

New song - "Screaming Suicide". Sounds like something they'd have written around the time of Death Magnetic; it has that same thrash-boogie feel. But the sound is crisper than Death Magnetic's was. Also, Hetfield has lost a bunch of weight and looks creepy now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDyDpdFZHBo

I'm definitely feeling this a lot less than Lux Aeturna

It's unmemorable in the most literal sense — I've already forgotten how it goes. But at least it's fast, and I'll wind up listening to the album a thousand times just like I've done with Death Magnetic and Hardwired..., so it'll sink in eventually.

This sounds like so much generic stuff that would just fill space during "Headbanger's Ball" in the '90s.

Also, Hetfield has lost a bunch of weight and looks creepy now.

How can you tell through all the Vaseline smeared on the camera lens?

Director: "Ok, now make one of those crazy Metallica grimaces, you know the ones, the ones you always do? The ones that look like you are both constipated and also very angry? Do one of those!"

I'm too afraid I'll be disappointed to press play.

I'm pretty gutted that the year I might finally see Metallica live is one in which they'll be releasing a new album.

This sounds like so much generic stuff that would just fill space during "Headbanger's Ball" in the '90s.

to me this is like a 5-star review

Butt metal.

i preferred the first single

i don’t dislike it & its fine for standard metallica - they’ve been doing versions of this song since Load. they all sound like “intense workout metal for Leg Day” to me lol

"I had an AI write a 21st century metallica song" vibes

I hate it when their riffs get bluesy.

More like greysy.

lol yeah their bluesy influence usually never comes off well. that one very stonery riff before the verse isn't bad per se but it just doesn't really fit their sound.

be like Slayer throwing in a ZZ Top riff

'Hardwired' had the right amount of evil-sounding half steps to stir up the right Metallica memories

Also in retrospect it's kind of incredible that they went so far as to have a Megadeth-style ellipse title but didn't add the exclamation point

shoulda used a question mark to keep it separate enough

"Killing is My Business...How are Margins Looking?"

Not about the new album but I finally listened to these Death Magnetic demos. Neat listen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z5lPY6bTqU