Back in high school, my chums and I spent a fair amount of time listening to music favored by the skater set (we had a 16′ wide half pipe in our back yard — 8′ transitions — that drew all sorts of skaters and bikers from all over the place; the neighbors were thrilled). Broadly defined, it was almost anything hard or confrontational or ironic, from D.R.I. to Bad Brains to Suicidal Tendencies to Anthrax to the Beastie Boys to the Violent Femmes. Ah, they were heady days.
One band that seemed to be in constant rotation back then was Metallica. Someone always had a song or two by them on a tape they’d bring by. I ended up seeing them in concert four or five times throughout the years, right up to the release of “Metallica” (a.k.a. “The Black Album”). By that point, the band was under a fair amount of pressure (at least, they should’ve been) from their fans for being sellouts. The raw, relatively sloppy ravings of the four alcoholic teenagers on “Kill ’em All” and “Ride the Lightning” had been replaced by super slick production values and fancy, million dollar videos (thank you, Bob Rock!). It sure felt like a descent into mediocrity.
Fast forward almost 20 years, and Metallica is out with a new album. By most accounts I’ve read, “Death Magnetic” is a return to the group’s early days; harder, faster, and under the trusted guidance of mega-producer Rick Rubin. How could it go wrong? Even my friend Brett, whose metal/rock ear I trust over all others, urged me to give it a listen. My curiosity finally got the better of me, and I went to iTunes to hear some samples. Here’s what greeted me:
Amazingly, I didn’t let that ludicrous image stop me from launching a couple of audio snippets from the album. They were OK, I suppose. But the music was redolent of the same kind of desperate, exaggerated, almost comical yearning for the old days so readily apparent in the image that announced the band on iTunes. As if we needed another data point to support the theory that you can’t go home again. So I didn’t end up buying any of the songs. And maybe this time will really be the last time our paths cross. The boys in the band will continue to be gazillionaires, and I’ll continue to be some kid who listened to their music once upon a time.