Overall, I really enjoyed Death Magnetic...especially, This was just your life, The Day that never comes (my wife's favorite), All Nightmare Long, Suicide and Redemption, and even The Unforgiven III (please, retire the name already!). I found the album to be everything St. Anger "should have been, but wasn't" (a great song name for their next album). There were a lot of good songs on this album, but no great ones. Metallica scores a solid B (B+ considering the St. Anger dud) in this release. My beefs with this album are:
- The songs were too long and changed tempo too often. Good songs make you want to listen again, and again. But only greats songs make you wish they would never end. These were good songs...so end them them at 4 or 5 minutes already. Personally, I feel this brought about too many tempo changes for my liking. Don't get me wrong...I am a fan of changing the tempo for mood and effect, but too many changes sound muddled and disorganized. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't see the band playing many of these tunes in concert since they are very difficult to memorize.
- Tempo changes II...as mentioned by others, there were just a few too many "because I can" tempo changes and misaligned mayhem throughout the album. Sure, there was some great stuff (I've been listening to it daily), but I just wanted to smack someone because the band changed tempo just when I was getting drawn into the musical movement. My wife is an excellent writer, but I am a 10-times better editor...I find all the mistakes that lead to flow and continuity problems. It's too bad the band didn't hire me to review their work prior to release...it would have been a solid A effort.
- What the heck happened to the bass? I would have loved to have heard just one-half of the bass effort they put into S&M...
