Metallica Album Reviews - Cilantro Milkshake

“Metal up your ass!”

Mettalica was an anal penetration band from Texas who introduced the world to “deed metal,” blending excessively twisty riffs with a message to their audience to form grassroots charities that serve old women and the homeless in their local communities, but they’re perhaps best known for their appearances on the Bravo reality TV show Some Kind of Alien and for leading the charge in the public’s right to free digital music.

Hang on, I’m getting a fax from my pharmacy.

Sorry, wrong band. I’m supposed to talk about Metallica.

“Moving back instead of forward seems to me absurd.”

You wanna talk about a band that relentlessly plows ahead like a fucking freight train? Then let’s talk about fucking Metallica. For a band that’s known for popularizing speed metal — with flawless riffing and blistering soloing and a macho singer — their best aspect is their smartly structured, at times extremely intricate compositions. Their songs stay interesting, always moving forward, never backward.

There are bands that sound something like Metallica, but are any of them as good? As the members of Metallica would say, “Fuck no!” You see, they say “fuck” a lot in interviews and on stage, or at least they did throughout their first 10 years, when their music was really fucking good.

After that, they changed their style a few times with wildly mixed results, and that’s cool. I’m not one of those motherfuckers who says bands “ruin their legacy” late in their career if they release a few clunkers. Metallica cemented their legacy over their first five albums, and I bet they used the heaviest fucking cement they could find.

Kill ‘Em All

1983
8 war machines out of 10

It’s easy for me to forget about this album, or at least sloppily categorize it like, “It’s the one with all the straightforward thrash songs and bad production.” But that’s stupid fucking nonsense. The fucking thing rules! These riffs tear holes in mountains with how goddamn sharp they are, speedy, mean, tight, and wicked awesome solos, along with drums pounding ass into the ground and Hetfield’s young-man voice, ummmm, at least keeping up.

The sound quality obviously had some room to grow. The whole thing stays in the mid to high register. The vocals are fine for what they are, but they aren’t terribly dynamic. The drums sound kind of cheap, but I do like how Lars uses his ride cymbal quite a bit. That’s the one that goes “Ping!” for all you rubes who’ve been listening to music your whole lives but still don’t know the six or seven pieces of a drumset.

There’s a bass solo, and who the hell knows why, except maybe Metallica’s business savvy was already at work, with the thinking being that long-haired dudes in jean jackets would be gulping malt liquor and saying, “That Metallica record sure is wild, and there’s even a bass solo!” “A bass solo? What the fuck?” And then there you go, now people are talking about your band for a little while longer. At least the track isn’t too long and it’s placed right in the middle of the album, so you get a solid chunk of kickassery on both sides.

I’ve gotten way fucking off track. The songs! The songs are all nicely crafted, with timely key changes, rhythm shifts, and well-constructed endings. They all stay interesting! Not to beat a fucking dead horse about that, but even on the one Metallica album that doesn’t have any classical guitar or big fat epics, Metallica was playing chess while everyone else was playing checkers with their song structures. Oh, and “Seek and Destroy” is on here, and while it’s never been my favorite, it does win the fucking world record for the most sinister riff in the history of fucking mankind. Bun-nuh WOW-WOW, weh-WOW-WOW, bun-nuh wow-wow-WOW-WOW-WOW-WOW!!!!

Ride the Lightning

1984
7 hot winds of death out of 10

It might shock you, shock you like a big bolt of electricity flying out of the fucking sky, that Ride the Lightning is my least favorite of Metallica’s first five albums. The guys are exploring new musical frontiers this time, but the end result is a bit uneven, and the sound quality is way too tinny (although, these modern-day remasters do the album a favor in that regard. They’ve beefed up the instruments, but they can’t cure the vocals of their strangely unnatural tinniness, lacking the grit of Kill ‘Em All and the oomph of everything that came later.) Let’s go song by song for this one.

“Fight Fire With Fire”: unreal speed riffing and a sick rhythm in the chorus, good song!

“Ride the Lightning”: more of a stutter-riff-driven thing, great structuring, not crazy about the vocal lines.

“For Whom the Bell Tolls”: down-tempo and repetitive by ‘tallica standards, the solos seem forced into it, never was a favorite of mine.

“Fade to Black”: a sad song built around mournful guitar, speeds up in its second half, very Sabbathy, good song but sounds like crap on this record, a lesser precursor of the ambitious songwriting to come later.

“Trapped Under Ice”: thrashy, hard-hitting, kinda forgettable.

“Escape”: stompy riffing and an out-of-character melodic chorus, weird song.

“Creeping Death”: balls-to-the-wall badassery with crafty tightening and loosening up, strong vocals, fucking classic!

“Call of Ktulu:” half-nice, half-badass instrumental with razor-sharp guitar work and cool changes, awesome tune!

By the way, for years I’ve heard people criticize Lars Ulrich’s drumming, saying he’s boring, he plays the same thing on every song, yada yada. Let’s address it here so I don’t have to muddy up the later reviews with my opinion on the matter. Lars Ulrich is a fucking good drummer! He’s pounding away, giving the songs their backbone, putting big loud beats where they’re supposed to go! The songs all have these jolting changes and he keeps up, keeps it sounding natural, and he’s spitting out thundering double bass and rolling fills and nasty snare/cymbal hits. Do you really want Gene Krupa juking and jiving off the trail or Neil Peart doing nifty clean tight razzle dazzle? This is fucking metal!

Okay, got that out of the way. This album is good, just not my favorite.

Master of Puppets

1986
9 circles of destruction out of 10

The guys basically pick up where they left off the last time, but, you know, better! There’s boomier drums, thumping bass that even has this scary “pop” sometimes, and most notably, much more powerful vocal performances. The songs are just as individualistic and well-structured, with a bit more musical maturity. The fast ones are fucking fast, the heavy stompy ones are fucking heavy and stompy, and the bits of slowed down melody are nice and warm.

“Battery” is iconically relentless and assaulting. “Master of Puppets” rips with hard riffage and takes some awesome turns along the way. “The Thing That Should Not Be” grooves through some odd time changes and its vocals find odd nooks and crannies to fall into. “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” is a heavy ballad (and with Metallica, that term is quite the stretch), perhaps a little cheesy in its darkness. “Disposable Heroes” harks to the old speed metal stuff but with more of those odd time changes, “Leper Messiah” may be the least memorable song on here but it’s still fucking solid as a rock, “Orion” is as unassuming as an 8-minute instrumental can be for Metallica, rocking and grooving and quieting down and building up (my only gripe is the fucking thing FADES OUT, WTF!), and “Damage, Inc.” just fucking murders. Go to 3:00 of that song and listen to how they blast through this sequence of stops and starts into a stop-on-a-dime stop into a RAZOR SHARP bit of guitar-only riffing. This shit is unreal.

An awful lot of people call this Metallica’s best album. It’s not quite that for me, but it’s definitely in a sweet spot of the catalog. You get the hard edge, excited vocals, and sheer ultra-macho adrenaline-fueled speed metal of the band’s early style, but with more professionalism, mood, beefy sound, and groovy melodies.

…And Justice For All

1988
10 wounds that never heal out of 10

If you’re gonna make heavy, macho, scary music, you may as well make it really, really, really, really fucking heavy, macho, and scary. The “black album” didn’t come till later, but if I had to match a color to the actual music, this one is as black as fucking night.

Following the death of bassist Cliff Burton, Metallica brought Jason Newsted into the fold, then proceeded to produce an album where you can’t hear him. Guess what? I hardly noticed! This shit sure sounds mighty heavy and bassy to me. Those chugging guitars seem to overload the mid-frequencies so much that there’s sort of a buzz to the whole thing. It’s weird, but also gives the album its own character.

In my memory, this whole thing is a relentless, fast-as-fuck riffing assault, but there’s lots of mid-tempo on here too, usually alternating with the fast stuff in extremely intricate compositions. The average song has maybe five different riffs, but they’re chopped up and pieced back together in so many ways, it’s more like each song has 30+ parts.

“…And Justice for All” and “Eye of the Beholder” do this particularly well (two underrated favorites of mine) and really spice things up with off-time rhythms. “Frayed Ends of Sanity” and “Blackened” are diabolically powerful, yet both have some really catchy vocal lines. “To Live Is To Die” is the instrumental, and unlike previous musically ambitious instrumentals, this one is fucking heavy as a semi truck carrying solid gold soaking wet with a brick its pocket driven by a fat dude. “Harvester of Sorrow” is evil sounding, “The Shortest Straw” is starkly dark, and “Dyers Eve” is speedy and jolting.

What else? Oh, DUH, there’s the epic “One,” with a somber, slow guitar-picking opening, sing-songy but strong vocals, naturally morphing into big fat heaviness and then into one of the most classic asskickings in all of music history, almost a precursor to the “tech metal” that wouldn’t come in vogue till 10+ years later.

Forgot to mention, the lead guitar work here adds to the music in delicious ways, each bit sounding quite different from the one before it. The vocal performances have grown again from the previous album, undeniably manly and consistent. If you’ve been paying attention, you might have noticed I don’t usually give a fuck about lyrics, but from what I can hear, these ones are the evilest.

Metallica

aka the “Black Album”
1991
9 fangs of rage out of 10

A decade of thrashing as fast as possible was enough for the guys, so they shifted gears, hired accomplished record producer and master of sonic frequencies Bob Rock (what a name, huh?), and wrote shorter, slower, simpler songs. The result was a big fat loud heavy ass fucking album that ended up in the ears of an audience that stretched way beyond “metalheads.”

The deep, juicy sound quality does wonders for the songs, and in turn, the songs give the sound more room to breathe. Even the fastest songs on here (“Holier Than Thou,” “Through the Never,” and “The Struggle Within”) aren’t as fast as most of the older stuff, and they don’t thrash as much as they charge forward. Power metal, you’d call it, not speed metal.

James’s voice and performance matured yet again — he’s singing a lot more than yelling — and you can generally make out every word. This newfound pop sensibility combines well with powerful tunes, especially on the sinister “Enter Sandman,” the stomping “Sad But True,” the uniquely eerie “The Unforgiven” and the sensitive, ballad-like “Nothing Else Matters.” All of them are catchy in their own ways. All of them were hits.

“Wherever I May Roam” is my favorite song on the album, riding along an Eastern scale and chugging forward with a touch of that “riffs chopped up and pieced together differently” style I mentioned from Justice, but also these airy down-tempo parts that build up wonderful tension.

The last four songs are certainly less memorable than the other seven, but they’re still damn good. The whole thing is impressive, maximizing Metallica’s sonic power and musicianship. You can hear the bass really well and it supplies a warm-toned low end, the drums are booming and that snare drum pierces the mix, the guitars have good variance and well-crafted solos (and the rest of the band really sculpts the music around the solos well too), and the vocals are simply iconic: at times powerful, angry, mean, sing-songy, anguished, and thoughtful.

Over the years, I haven’t listened to this album much, probably because I heard it about a million times in the 90s. I’m never turned off whenever I do hear something from it, though, and listening to the whole thing again for this review was a pleasure. It’s got an instantly recognizable quality to it that still sounds kind of fresh.

Live Shit: Binge & Purge

1993
7 cocks right down its throat out of 10

OOOHH-AAAHH!!! Is three fucking hours of METALLICA enough for you motherfuckers, HUH?!! That’s what you fucking got here, YEAH! This originally came in a 3-CD, 3-VHS box set as overloaded as the YEAHHHH-YEA-YEAHHHH-YEAH performances on the audio-only portion I’m reviewing, recorded over several nights in 1993 in Mexico City. James tries to do a Mexican accent at one point, and what word does he go to first? “Metallica” of course! He doesn’t shut up thrOOOOUUGGGHHHHout the whole fucking thing. It’s constant “Do you all have the fucking Black Album?!” and “We’re just getting warmed up!” and “Pretty fucking good, huh?!” and “I wanna see some action, you pussies!” Unless “pussies” is Spanish for “beloved music fans paying their hard-earned money,” that’s just impolite.

The music itself is just as brash and cocky, with improvisations ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE, FUCK YEAH like extra drum beats every FUCKING where and different notes here and there and Jason Newsted taking the vocal lead on a couple songs and FUCK YEAH fuck-around jams that seriously go on FOREVER, UH-HUH!!! You get sizable chunks of all the first five fucking albums and four covers, not including DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE bits of Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused” and Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” that pop up unexpectedly. Does it sound good? Well, yeah, it’s fucking big, boomy, heavy, thumping MOTHERFUCKER and cutting right through the overly loud crowd noise. If you want to get technical, you could say this offers heavier-sounding LET ME HEAR YOU versions of some of the early stuff, UH-HUH but none of it sounds fucking particularly special. I’m never going to say to somebody, “Man, I know ‘Of Wolf and Man’ is great, but have you heard the MOTHERFUCKING LIVE VERSION? SHIT!!” This release is really fucking nice to have for the Metallica die-hards, but I’m not going out of my fucking way to listen to it GOOD NIGHT!!!

Load

1996
6 things inside without a care out of 10

My buddy Paul likes to say, in regards to listening to a band’s catalog in chronological order, “When is the dip coming? There’s always a dip.”

For Metallica, in my opinion, it’s right here.

Technically speaking, Load has a lot in common with the Black Album, in that the songs move slow through simple rock structures, letting the riffs and melodies take center stage. The catch is that Black’s riffs and melodies are really good, like, magically good. But here, they aren’t, and I find the album’s 78 minutes (!) tough to sit through.

Stylistically, they’ve abandoned the spooky vibes of yesteryear in favor of something much more … blue collar. (Which, obviously, didn’t match up with their bank accounts.) It’s a gruff sound rooted in blues-based hard rock. I mean, listen to the slidey solo on the opener “Ain’t My Bitch.” It’s something off an Aerosmith record! “Poor Twisted Me” is basically an extra loud Southern blues song! “Mama Said” is a laughably sincere country ballad!

It’s still expertly performed and produced, you gotta give it that. The band wisely kept Bob Rock around to make this material sound as good as humanly possible. It hits hard, strong riffing, wailing solos, rock solid drumming, boomy bass, clear macho vocals with lots of nifty double vocal tricks.

The album’s most recognizable songs are the ones with a bit of a lighter side that end up in a loud rocking place anyway. “Until It Sleeps” is ominous and moody. On “Hero of the Day,” James digs for a sensitive vocal tone on a few country-inspired lines. “Bleeding Me” goes slow and has these open chords sounding like rippling water. “The Outlaw Torn” goes for a building-up, heavily layered feel.

This stuff certainly seemed “non-Metallica-ish” in its time. I can rock out to it, but I rarely want to.

Reload

1997
4 pumping engines out of 10

When Load was released, the band was telling the media that it was the first of a two-part set of albums. My general opinion on double albums, or whatever you call this type of “pair of albums,” is that they’d be better if the band whittled down the material down to a single album. Not sure why that always seems to be the case. Maybe even the world’s best songwriters can’t muster enough inspiration for more than one album at a time. Not only that, but both Load and Reload are so long you can hardly fit them each on a CD. What are the chances that all of that music would be good?

As it turns out, I think most of the “keep it” material found its way onto Load, and the “throw it away” material wound up on Reload. It’s a slog to get through. A handful of the songs sound like clones of each other, with the same type of stompy down-tempo beat, the same type of riffs, and the same type of gruff vocals. A couple are more up-tempo but pretty generic. And one of these songs has a riff that seems stolen from “Enter Sandman”! It’s like something a kid would write before his older brother said to him, “Dude, that’s just a Metallica ripoff.”

Even the two hits aren’t all that great. “Fuel” is a good, high-energy song, but the vibe is a bit too “OOHHH-AUGHH” for my taste. “The Memory Remains” has a spooky feel and the totally surprising addition of a 50-year-old Marianne Faithful doing wordless backing vocals, and it never did it for me.

I do like the unusual “Low Man’s Lyric,” which features a bright-sounding instrument called a hurdy gurdy, along with some violin and the band in a somber, thoughtful mood. One out of 13 isn’t bad.

Garage Inc.

1998
7 mutant thoughts out of 10

This is a double disc containing TWENTY-EIGHT covers. (And speaking of covers, look at that cover art! What the fuck?!)

The first disc has newly recorded performances. The second disc is an assortment of stuff the band recorded at one time or another. Can we just go one by one?

“Free Speech for the Dumb” by Discharge: Fuckin’ annoying.

“It’s Electric” by Diamond Head: Kind of fun but repetitive.

“Sabra Cadabra” by Black Sabbath: Hey, I like Sabbath, but did the original seem this monotonous?

“Turn the Page” by Bob Segar: It’s a winner!

“Die, Die My Darling” by the Misfits: I like those punky melodies.

“Loverman” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Call me crazy, but I don’t think Metallica is the right band to be covering Nick Cave.

“Mercyful Fate” by Mercyful Fate: Rocking but forgettable.

“Astronomy” by Blue Oyster Cult: Cool, moody song.

“Whiskey in the Jar” by Traditional, inspired by Thin Lizzy’s cover: Annoying!!

“Tuesday’s Gone” by Lynard Skynard: They were wise to be faithful to the original, at least the parts that matter, because it really is one precious tune.

“The More I See” by Discharge: Sounds like an early Metallica song that isn’t fully developed yet.

“Helpless” by Diamond Head: Wow this sounds even more like early Metallica, but it rips!

“The Small Hours” by Holocaust: Spoooky! Good!

“The Wait” by Killing Joke: Fucking EVIL! Excellent performance.

“Crash Course in Brain Surgery” by Budgie: If this song were a human, it would have big hair and leather tights.

“Last Caress/Green Hell” by the Misfits: So we enter the old recordings portion of the set. “Last Caress” is a great, fun tune!

“Am I Evil?” by Diamond Head: Yes, you are evil.

“Blitzkrieg” by Blitzkrieg: “Meh”-tallica.

“Breadfan” by Budgie: Thrashy! Kicking!

“The Prince” by Diamond Head: Man, this one is just ruthlessly violent jagged-edged speed metal. I’m now a danger to myself and others!

“Stone Cold Crazy” by Queen: Catchy ass song and 100 times heavier than the original.

“So What” by Anti-Nowhere League: A rousing exploration of vulgarity. Catchy too!

“Killing Time” by Sweet Savage: Powerful shit but lacking personality.

“Overkill” by Motorhead: Punk metal, I guess. If you like Motorhead, you’ll like it.

“Damage Case” by Motorhead: Unfortunately, not as good as “Damage Inc.”

“Stone Dead Forever” by Motorhead: Care-free vibe on this one.

“Too Late Too Late” by Motorhead: I think James’ voice cracks at one point, and who can blame him? He’s been hollering his head off for over two hours at this point!

I’m sad it’s over … Not! Just kidding, this thing is obviously long as hell, but there’s enough good, heavy stuff to warrant its existence in the world, especially for Metallica die-hards. I figured I should list my top 5 favorites for no reason at all:

“Last Caress”
“The Wait”
“Tuesday’s Gone”
“The Prince”
“The Small Hours”

S&M

1999
8 soothing lights out of 10

Playing in an orchestra, especially compared to playing in a rock band, is quite lame. There’s no “cool” factor like there is in rock. These classical musicians wear stuffy clothing and play music that was written centuries ago, note for note, along with 100 other people. They have no room for artistic expression. They have no built-in sex appeal. They don’t go around the world on tour. They have no power to affect a younger generation. They have no effect on the world, period. If they die, they get replaced by another player and their audience is none the wiser.

I say this because when I listen to S&M, a live double album where the San Francisco Symphony plays along with Metallica songs, it’s hard for me not to focus on what an adrenaline-pumping thrill it must have been for the orchestra players to perform for a jacked-up Metallica audience. In their usual world, they get respectful golf claps after each piece. With Metallica, there are gigantic roars and sing-alongs from the crowd all over the place. Imagine playing your little violin while being blown back by boozed-up cheers like you just scored the championship-winning goal.

I honestly got chills listening to it this morning thinking about that. It helps that the production quality is top notch. All facets of the music are crystal clear, but you get a vivid sense of being in a loud concert setting.

Some of the orchestra stuff (composed by the mega-accomplished Michael Kamen) blends in harmoniously, but the majority of it is wildly ambitious, adding completely unexpected flavor and depth to the lockstep performance from the band.

The fact that it works so well is a testament to the original songs, which, as I keep telling you, do a good job progressing from part to part and taking you on a little journey, not unlike classical symphonic music.

You’ve got a bunch of the standards, “Enter Sandman,” “Sad But True,” “Master of Puppets,” “One,” “Nothing Else Matters,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “Wherever I May Roam,” but you’ve also got “Of Wolf and Man” and “The Thing That Should Not Be,” and I get the impression that Kamen found something in those songs that would lend itself to the orchestra treatment.

A whopping seven songs come from Load and Reload, plus two unreleased newer songs “- Human” and “No Leaf Clover,” and the orchestra really shines on them, adding great color to otherwise duller material. “The Outlaw Torn” and “Bleeding Me” are especially kickass with the orchestra filling in their wide open spaces.

It’s a winner, baby. It’s not something I listen to very often, but it blew me away the first time I heard it and continues to pack its unique form of entertainment.

St. Anger

2003
1 kind of monster out of 10

Early on in Some Kind of Monster, Kirk and Lars are staring at each other’s glassy eyes during a therapy session, and the first time I saw it, my friends and I were laughing uncontrollably like hyenas on shrooms. Metallica, the most ear-splitting, string-shredding, drum-attacking, beer-guzzling, F-word-yelling band ever, with the gold records and world tours to back it up … are filming themselves in THERAPY?! What a world. The documentary is utterly hilarious and you’ve got to see it. Here’s a few highlights:

Lars, on Bob Rock’s attempt at playing bass: “Maybe you should go home and practice.”

Lars’ father, on a new Metallica song: “I would say, delete that.”

James, on upsetting his family by taking vacations, days after he missed his child’s first birthday to take a vacation: “I’m getting better at that.”

You can’t make this shit up. That’s why I always say truth is stranger than fiction. I mean, I ALWAYS say that shit. Every day. I walk into the barber and dude is like, “You got an appointment?” And I’m like, “Truth is stranger than fiction. Yes I do. 3 o’clock.”

The documentary is also pretty fascinating. As they’re starting to write material, Bob Rock says, “It should sound like a band getting together for the first time … only the band is Metallica.” Maybe the guys took that literally, because the album DOES sound like a band getting together for the first time … before they knew how to write songs! Oh! Bam! Burn! Ouchy ouchy! Look at me, I can be funny too and this goddamn album is horrible!

There’s a subtle moment while they’re recording, where you can see James flipping through some catalog and circling like half the products in it. No wonder this album sucks. Dude was too focused on shopping!

The band performs a few of their new songs in a literal prison for literal prisoners, and I was like, “Serves ‘em right! Don’t kill people if you ever want to hear ‘Enter Sandman’ live.”

James complains that the other guys are working on music when he’s not around, making him feel like he has no say in the matter, and Kirk responds, “That’s the last fifteen years for me,” and everyone IGNORES him! Even the therapist shrugs him off as if to say, “Oh, shut up, everyone knows James and Lars call the shots.”

Toward the end, they’re trying to whittle 30+ songs down to the 11 that ended up on the album … and it was still this bad? Good lord. Thank God they didn’t go and release the rest as Re-St. Anger, you know?

The songs are bleak and awfully repetitive. But the sound? It’s even worse! THE WORST! Bob Rock, where were you when they needed you? Did you sabotage this record as revenge for when James lumped you in with “the business side of things”?

In a way, this album needs to exist just to prove how hard it is to make quality music time and time again. If a band this good can make an album this bad, it makes you appreciate how much good music there is out there, you know? Or maybe they sucked all along and Jason Newsted was secretly doing all the work.

I joke, but there are some sweet moments in the doc. Kirk seems like a kind soul who wants everyone to get along. He’s the glue guy. Bob Rock seems like a genuinely good dude, upbeat, smart, and a constant cheerleader. I love how politely he disagrees with the therapist when he’s like, “No, you dumbass, records sound good when you work hard at it, not your psychobabble bullshit.” (He definitely doesn’t say it like that.) And it’s nice to see the glee from new bass player Robert Trujillo when he’s welcomed into the band.

The songs from St. Anger are a lot more tolerable in five-second spurts between scenes than they are in their entirety on this wretched, smelly, 75-minute-long album. So go out and buy the documentary. Don’t bother buying the album or even downloading it.

Hey, Metallica’s management was right when they talked about the importance of selling DVDs since nobody pays for music anymore. Huh … maybe these Metallica guys are smarter than we think.

Some Kind of Monster

2004
5 blind devotions out of 10

Well, this certainly is annoying … a random ass live album called Some Kind of Monster that has nothing to do with the documentary of the same name I just spent the last album’s review talking about?

The whole thing is just 43 minutes, new live performances of six songs from the band’s first three albums, and TWO versions of the song “Some Kind of Monster” from St. Anger. Can I ask, why did this need to exist? To wash the bad taste of the last album out of our mouths? To get Robert Trujillo some income?

Anyway, the live stuff is fine but not nearly as booming or crisp as other live material that’s available. It’s thrashing, smashing, sorta trebly, sorta sounding like you’re in a smaller-than-Metallica-sized venue with a shitty sound system. But, hey, if you’re a huge Metallica fan, that’s kinda cool. If you’re not, you can safely skip this one.

Published October 2021