Metallica: Enter Night (55 page)

This feeling reaches its apotheosis on the album’s most bloatedly self-referential – and, frankly, embarrassing – moment in the near-ten-minute instrumental ‘Suicide & Redemption’, clearly intended as a big ‘Call of Ktulu’ moment that, against the odds, might just have succeeded if it didn’t go on (and on). The only track to fade out, it’s a safe bet most general listeners will have exercised the skip option on their CD players/laptops/iPods long before then. This underlines the chief failings of the album: the completely tokenistic feel it all has; the very 1980s signage it gives everything. Ending with the shortest track at just over five minutes, ‘My Apocalypse’ is yet another track entirely given over, it seems, to somehow recreating the golden era of the band; redolent of the title track of
Master of Puppets
, its riff straight from ‘Battery’. The question inevitably occurs: who is all this meant to please? Those fans too young to have experienced the real thing first time around? The producer whose modus operandi centres on recapturing the spirit of those heydays? Or perhaps a band that has now so thoroughly lost its way, musically, it simply wishes to wipe the slate clean and go back to what it perceives as simpler, more heartfelt times? Or more cynically, to simply tap into the classic rock market in the same way AC/DC, Iron Maiden and Kiss now do, reinforcing the nostalgia for a not-always-shared past grown way out of proportion to its original meaning? As if everything after
Black
had not really happened and, like Bobby Ewing, the band had simply stepped out of the shower to begin again where they had left off before everything went, you know, all fuzzy and freaked-out and fucked-up?

That certainly seemed to be the message they were sending out when James characterised the new songs as ‘like old Metallica…but with more meaning now’, or when they had begun performing the title track to…
And Justice for All
again in their latter shows. Kirk, meanwhile, had begun referring openly to the new album as feeling ‘like the band’s sixth album’ rather than what would be their ninth –i.e. the follow-up to
Black
, rather than
St. Anger
. This from one of the main instigators of Metallica’s mid-1990s musical rethink.

These were not reasons, on their own, to damn the new Metallica album, however. If most of the lyrics seemed to concern death, that was fine, too. As J.R.R. Tolkien once put it, ‘the best human stories are always about one thing: the inevitability of death’. What ultimately disappointed were not the songs – solid enough attempts to at least do what they had once been best at, delivering thrash metal anthems for the headbanging crowd – and certainly not Rubin’s production, which, despite his reputation for valuing atmosphere over technical perfection, was super-tight and glossy. It was the sense of a band bringing a well-defined, carefully thought-out product to market; something that could be forgiven when, in the case of
Black
– their first major attempt to do so – it had resulted in such great work as ‘Enter Sandman’ and ‘Sad but True’; or, paradoxically, in the case of
Load
, where the determination to subvert their own image clearly took such precedence over the actual songs. But here, on an album that purported to refute such notions in favour of a return to old-fashioned principles of musicianship and honest artistic endeavour – of, as Jason Newsted, of all people, put it, ‘[working] for eight hours a day in a rehearsal room like brothers should’ – it hits entirely the wrong note.

From the ponderous sound of the heartbeat that opens the album (as if the broken body of Metallica was coming slowly back to life on the operating table, like the moment in Kirk’s beloved
Frankenstein
when the good doctor cries: ‘It’s alive! It’s alive!’), to its truly cringe-inducing front cover image of a coffin – a motif that, excruciatingly, would feature throughout the two-year world tour they would embark on to promote the album – to surely the worst title of any Metallica album ever,
Death Magnetic
, an oblique reference to how so many rock stars have died young, as if magnets for death, this is Metallica-by-numbers; thrash-made-easy; the classic sound of a golden-era band delivering its goods with knobs on but few, if any, surprises for those of us whose memories are now longer than our hair. Even the pedantic sleevenotes seem hopelessly ill thought out, like a grown-up’s idea of a child’s drawing, the lyrics to the tracks partly disabled by the coffin-shaped cut-out that runs through every page and made even harder to decode through being scattered in random order, beginning with the last track first (perhaps not so randomly after all then). Naturally, there are the usual Anton Corbijn band shots, but even they – studied poses of each member standing in shades and leather jacket against a grainy black-and-white wall – could have been taken by Anton Anyone.

None of this stopped
Death Magnetic
becoming the most colossal success when it was released worldwide on 12 September 2008, going straight to Number One in thirty-two countries, including both Britain and America – the first time that had happened since
Load
twelve years before – thereby proving that metal fans would take even substandard prime-time-era Metallica over postmodern, Napster-baiting, therapist-consulting Metallica any day of the headbanging week. The album had shifted more than 490,000 copies in its first three days in the USA, making Metallica the only band in US chart history to have five albums debut at Number One (breaking their previous tie with The Beatles, U2 and the Dave Matthews Band). Reviews were also highly complimentary. The
New York Times
praised the album for ‘compositions that are nasty and complex’, while
Time
magazine claimed that ‘songs fly by with the force of the world’s angriest amusement-park ride, and when they set you down, often after seven or eight dizzying but tuneful minutes, giddiness is the only appropriate response’. The grass-roots reaction was the same, with the
Kerrang!
review proclaiming that ‘Metallica once again sound like one of the most exciting bands in the world’ making ‘a mockery of the modern [metal] competition’.

The key to this success, Lars told me some months later, during the band’s second round of arena-headlining dates in the UK, ‘was timing’.
Death Magnetic
was ‘a reconciliation with the past’. He had wondered if it was possible for the band to return with such fervour to its thrash roots. ‘But I knew that if it was gonna happen, the only way it could happen would be organically. It was not something that could be forced: “Now we have to sit down and make another of these records that has one foot in what we did in the Eighties.”’ It had been made possible by ‘the combination of Rick Rubin; the combination of the twentieth anniversary of
Master of Puppets
and how we [re]familiarised ourselves with that record, started playing it again, became comfortable with it; the Rob Trujillo element; again the planets aligning…All of a sudden it was just like there we were in the thick of it again, and it felt good and it felt right and it felt real – through a little bit of prodding from Rick Rubin and some pep talks about how we didn’t need to sort of deny that side of us and blah, blah, blah.’

It was as much about Bob Rock
not
being there, as Rick Rubin being there, James had told me earlier that same day: ‘I think Bob had gotten comfortable. We had gotten too comfortable with each other, especially going through all of the emotional draining of
St. Anger
. We learned so much about each other, we were too close, I think. It was good to move on and I think Rick Rubin is the exact opposite of Bob Rock. The fact that we were able to sit down and write ourselves, somewhat pre-production ourselves, do things for ourselves without Rick Rubin babysitting or sitting over our shoulder the whole time, that was where we were able to try our wings out again and fly as a band, after all these near-death experiences of the
Monster
movie and
St. Anger
. So it was the right thing at the right time. Not to talk bad about Bob whatsoever, because he’s taken us places that we never would have gone before. We’ve learned so much from him.’ But this, suddenly, was different. It had to be.

Old friends had their own views. Flemming Rasmussen describes
Death Magnetic
as ‘a good step in the right direction’, but adds: ‘I think they should have called me. You know, if they want to do an album like that, why don’t they fucking just call me?’ He added: ‘It doesn’t sound nowhere as good as
Ride
or
Master
, for sure, no.’ Could he ever really see himself working with them again, though? ‘I’ve got no idea. I hope so.’ Xavier Russell offers a similarly cautious response: ‘I think it’s a lot better than their recent albums. It is a sort of return. Some of it’s even a bit earlier than
Master of Puppets
.’ The trouble, says X, is that ‘You hear it through and think that’s quite good. Then after it’s finished you think: can I remember any of the songs?’ Geoff Barton says, ‘I hate the production. If they’re attempting to reactivate the spirit of 1986 they’ve done quite a good job. But I don’t think it’s all there, to be honest.’ He adds: ‘The strange thing is to see the band going almost full circle and becoming nostalgic about those days.’ When Geoff interviewed James about the album, ‘[he] was very, very nostalgic about the thrash days.
Metal Hammer
had just produced a thrash special and he had a copy of it and he was looking at it and there were almost like tears in his eyes.’

The success of
Death Magnetic
was about more than just the strength or otherwise of the songs, of course. It was about simple old-fashioned marketing and promotion – it’s no good having the Second Coming if no one is there to see it – delivered in a thoroughly modern way. Months before the album was shipped out to stores, a new website,
www.missionmetallica.com
, was launched, in anticipation of both internet piracies – now, almost a decade on from Napster, a part of everyday life – and to maximise interest in owning a ‘hard copy’ (i.e. record or CD) of the forthcoming album. Initially offering visitors to the site behind-the-scenes insights into the recording, including contact with producer Rubin, it also promised a veritable treasure trove of exclusive content, such as fly-on-the-wall video footage, audio clips of works-in-progress and archival photos from their time in the studio. The 350-plus minutes of footage would eventually reach nearly ten million people across 161 countries. There was also an exclusive for the fan club – or, Mission Metallica members, as they were now dubbed – with the album being streamed a day before its official worldwide release, thus building a priceless word-of-mouth buzz among the internet community. Mission Metallica members also got first dibs on buying tickets for the forthcoming tour. On top of this, fans could interact directly with the band, who invited them to post clips of themselves performing Metallica songs on YouTube, which Lars viewed personally before posting his own video to offer his thanks. The clip had received more than 1.2 million hits by the time the album was released a week later. For a band that had actively positioned itself at the start of the decade against the growing influence of the internet, Metallica was now one of the bands positively leading the way with how to utilise the available technology. Whatever mistakes Lars had made, you couldn’t say he didn’t learn from them. Fast.

Meanwhile, back on terra firma, Metallica also set a new record for the most radio stations in history to sign up for an ‘exclusive’ broadcast, entitled
The World Premiere of Death Magnetic
. The programme, promoted by
FMQB
(the trade magazine for the US radio industry), was hosted by Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters, and featured the four Metallica members being interviewed. It was aired on more than 175 stations across the USA and Canada. Just for good measure, the first single from the album, ‘The Day That Never Comes’ was also issued and immediately topped both the Mainstream and Active Rock Charts, while seven more tracks from
Death Magnetic
simultaneously charted across three US radio formats – Alternative, Active Rock, and Rock – an almost unheard-of feat for any artist. There were similar blanket promotional efforts made in Europe and the UK. Britain’s Radio 1 turned 12 September into Metallica Day and devoted its entire twenty-four-hour output to the band and its new album, climaxing with the live broadcast of a special cut-price fan-club-members-only show at London’s O2 Arena. A similar event was held in Berlin.

Metallica didn’t quite get things all their own way, though. As ever, the internet was there to confound and connive. On 2 September, ten days before its official release date, a French record store knowingly jumped the gun and began selling copies of the album. Within hours, online versions of it were flying onto file-sharing networks around the world. This time, however, Metallica had anticipated the move and were ready with their response. ‘By 2008 standards, that’s a victory,’ a determinedly chilled Lars told
US Today
. ‘If you’d told me six months ago that our record wouldn’t leak until ten days out, I would have signed up for that. We made a great record, and people seem to be getting off on it way more than anyone expected.’ The internet community still had one more trick up its virtual sleeve, however. Two days before the official release date, a site called
MetalSucks.net
posted a link to a Russian website with a domain that offered the album in edited format. Cheekily dubbed
Death Magnetic: Better, Shorter, Cut
, the edited online album had cut each track by an average of two to three minutes, as if in imitation of a review by prominent Pitchfork online commentator Cosmo Lee, who’d declared the album redeemable only by cutting the exorbitantly lengthy tracks drastically.

Ultimately, however, Metallica now owned the internet in ways it would not have been considered possible in the bad old days of battling Napster. Six months after
Death Magnetic
came the release of
Guitar Hero: Metallica
. An Activision computer game for which the band had taken time out from promoting the album prior to release in order to film the various motion-capture scenes,
GH:M
featured twenty-eight of Metallica’s best-known numbers, plus twenty-one tracks from Metallica-endorsed artists, from obvious old-school choices such as Motörhead, Diamond Head and Judas Priest, to cool metal newbies like The Sword and Mastodon. Viewed from a certain angle, this was the shrewdest piece of business Metallica had done since inviting Bob Rock to help them become a commercial hit nearly twenty years before.
Guitar Hero
, a devilishly simple but infinitely clever computer game that distilled the essence of playing a musical instrument down to the push of a button, had already proved to be a revenue stream so great that it was being talked of as one of the innovative new ways the net might actually help rebuild the record business it was then currently almost single-handedly dismantling; even a possible entry point for a new generation of guitar-worshipping kids to get into rock in the first place.