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<\/p>\nSome bands don\u2019t age all too well. Some rely on nostalgia and stick to doing \u201cGreatest Hits\u201d tours, others stay past their prime and put out new music that doesn\u2019t strike a strong chord with their audience. Some bands decline with age, but others find ways to rejuvenate themselves and revitalize their music by, ironically enough, going back to the well with what brought them to prominence in the first place. Enter Metallica; 35 years in, they haven\u2019t missed a beat. (In the studio, anyway.) Now, in the 8 years since their last album, Death Magnetic<\/i>, the \u2018Tallica boys have done some pretty adventurous things, including their own music festival, an IMAX 3D concert film, and an \u201cart\u201d collaboration album with Lou Reed that we will never speak of. But now that all of those ventures are behind them, the time to return to the studio came and went, and the end result is certainly a return to form for what made Metallica\u2026 well, Metallica<\/i>. Enter the long-awaited Hardwired\u2026 to Self-Destruct<\/i>, a blazing aural assault of a double album, from frantic start to explosive finish. Was it worth the eight-year-long wait? I have a feeling you\u2019ll already know what I think, but let\u2019s find out, anyway.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0If Death Magnetic<\/i> was a more contemporary approach to the Metallica traits, then Hardwired<\/i> is a fitting amalgamation of all of their traits blended in with a more modern approach. Firstly, there are elements of their \u201880s thrash styles present on the album, such as with the title track, \u201cHardwired,\u201d and the closing track of the album, \u201cSpit Out The Bone,\u201d both of which are fast, aggressive, and blistering, serving as perfect bookends to the album. There are also elements of their early \u201890s style, lifted from the self-titled Metallica<\/i>, in the songs \u201cConfusion\u201d and \u201cDream No More,\u201d both of which are a bit slower paced and more centered around groove and melody. There are even some parts from their mid-90s fusion stylings, and their Load<\/i> and Reload<\/i> albums, with the tracks \u201cAm I Savage? and \u201cManUNkind\u201d offering a few blues-y grooves in the guitar work and riffs. But regardless of the elements at play, they are all presented within a more modern style, blending both the older styles and traits with a more current-day approach to their style of thrash metal.<\/p>\n
For this album, all due to a lost cell phone in an airport in Europe, there are no riff ideas from lead guitarist Kirk Hammett present on the album, as they\u2019ve all been handled by rhythm guitarist and vocalist James Hetfield, who also handled the main load of song structure and writing with drummer Lars Ulrich. And no, the bass isn\u2019t left out, either, with bassist Robert Trujillo supplying some very fitting lines and a perfectly complimentary bottom end to each track. All of the guitar work feels and sounds much tighter, in comparison to Death Magnetic<\/i>, as do the drum patterns and fills. To note, there are actually quite a bit more drum fills on this album, and they all work incredibly well within their songs; on the third track, \u201cNow That We\u2019re Dead,\u201d there\u2019s a solid fill on the drums that leads into the main hook, at the very start of the song, and it adds an extra layer to the beat that wouldn\u2019t be there if it were just a standard fill pattern. Also present on this album are some wonderfully welcomed double-bass drum patterns, never feeling too out of place and always coming in at the right moment of tension and climax on some of these tracks. (\u201cSpit Out The Bone\u201d and \u201cMoth Into Flame,\u201d especially.)As far as the lyrics go, Hetfield\u2019s lyrics are quite a bit more retrospective, branching out to subjects such as PTSD in \u201cConfusion,\u201d the tragic price of fame in \u201cMoth Into Flame,\u201d as inspired by the film Amy<\/i> (about the life and death of pop and soul singer Amy Winehouse), and the feelings of wanting vengeance over a parent\u2019s child being killed in \u201cHere Comes Revenge,\u201d which also takes inspiration from the unfortunate tragedy of Morgan Harrington, a college student from Virginia who disappeared after a Metallica concert in 2009, only to be found dead two months later. There\u2019s also a special tribute to the deceased Lemmy Kilmister, the man behind the influential rock and metal Mot\u00f6rhead, in the song \u201cMurder One,\u201d that is, admittedly, not the tightest song on the record, but the sentiment is still present and valid.<\/p>\n