“Traumatic! Volcanic! Psychotic! Demonic! Hypnotic!” So runs the rhyme scheme in the title track of Metallica’s 11th studio album. Obviously, they’re not going for subtlety. They’ve annoyed fans before by attempting to tone it down on their past couple of releases so, as they edge into their sixties, the band return to the solidly compelling thrash metal with which they made their name. And honestly, when they’re on form, no band on the planet is better at writing and executing epic songs that head hugger-mugger for the horizon in a way that makes listeners feel as though they’re hugging the curves and swerving the spills of a Formula One racetrack. Songs don’t follow formulae; they just accelerate hard through the straights and snake wildly through the corners as they come. James Hetfield’s screaming hyperbole locking directly into the pounding rubber of Lars Ulrich’s relentless riff-making.
In recent interviews, the band have spoken of embracing their age. Thundering their way through a week-long residency on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, they joked that the new generation of kids who discovered them after their 1986 song “Master of Puppets” featured in Netflix’s hit series Stranger Things last year (it was streamed 17.5 million times and flew to the top of the iTunes rock chart) had no idea how decrepit they are.
Like Stranger Things, the lyrics on 72 Seasons are a turbocharged fusion of moody nostalgia with present paranoia. There are no ballads. It’s 77 minutes of grimily meshed gears. Hetfield – recently divorced and out of rehab for the second time – has explained that the title “came out of a book I was reading about childhood, basically, and sorting out childhood as an adult”. Those 72 seasons refer to “the first 18 years of your life. How do you evolve and grow and mature and develop your own ideas and identity of self after those first 72 seasons?”
So, on single “If Darkness had a Son”, Hetfield calls on nascent goths to “paint your eyes as black as sorrow/ hide yourself behind tomorrow”. Riding the waves of power chords and squalling leads from the dark altar of his stage, he gloats that he has “all the children subjugated” while addressing his own addiction issues in the repeated assertion: “I bathe in holy water/ Temptation leave me be.” (Earlier this month, the BBC revealed that the band’s “holy water” of choice is no longer vodka but Earl Grey tea, “with a little hint of vanilla... yummy”.)
On the faster “Lux Aeterna”, Hetfield praises the communion of the live gig – “sonic salvation!” – and calls upon the faithful to “cast out the demons that strangle your life!”. Meanwhile, on headbanger “Screaming Suicide”, the frontman swaps out the fighting fantasy imagery for straighter therapy speak as he unpacks the consequences of internalised blame. The album concludes with the 11-minute, Black Sabbath-indebted monster track: “Inamorata” (the longest song Metallica have recorded to date). Melodies churn up murkily from the depths of Robert Trujillo’s bass. And there’s a flicker of lyrical hope in the gloom.
72 Seasons may not see Metallica doing anything new – but it does find their old machine firing on all cylinders. Old and new fans alike will be headbanging happily throughout.
