Having spent two decades making progressively worse albums, Metallica finally came good again with 2008’s Death Magnetic and 2016’s Hardwired... to Self-Destruct, both of which harked back to the inventiveness and sheer energy of their 1980s material. In their wake, 72 Seasons, the Californians’ 11th album, feels like a step backwards. While the 12 songs here are indisputably as heavy as anything they’ve ever recorded, across 77 long minutes the tempo is far too often set to “chugging”, except on a couple of bracingly thrashier numbers and the more nuanced closer, Inamorata. Imagine 1991’s Black Album – the record that catapulted them into the big league – with barely any of the hooks or melodies and you wouldn’t be too wide of the mark.
At least there is greater adventurousness lyrically. James Hetfield delves back into his troubled childhood (as he first did on 1988’s Dyers Eve) for some of his most personal lyrics to date, most notably on the bleak Chasing Light: “Lost his way through wicked streets, but he is someone’s little boy”. (Not every song is this revealing – the furious Lux Æterna‘s lyrics instead nod to early inspirations Diamond Head as well as their own Motorbreath.)
For all Hetfield’s soul-baring, however, as a whole 72 Seasons seems to mark the end of their late-career renaissance and is ultimately far more solid than spectacular.
