When a band like Metallica release a new album, there’s always a fuzz around it, about how it’s going to be, is it going to be thrash metal or not, is it old school enough for the die-hard fans, is it going to bring and please new people, and many other equations, because everybody knows that they’re an historic band and an icon in the heavy metal world.
“Hardwired… To Self-Destruct”, is exactly what the fans have been waiting for since “Death Magnetic”, since it picks up where the last album ended. The production and mastering, as the listener can expect, is very good and effective. It has a modern touch, but got also some nice feeling from the old days in those riffs, flowing through an album divided in 2 CD’s, 6 tracks each.
Songs like “Hardwired”, “Atlas, Rise!”, “Moth Into Flame”, and “Spit Out the Bone”, are great thrash songs, that certainly will please the most skeptical listeners, who would thought that band couldn’t do songs like the 80’s anymore. Then we have the most progressive side of the band, shown in songs like “Halo On Fire” (the riff in the end is one of the most brilliant riffs ever written by the band), “Dream More”, and “Confusion”, where the listener can have the perception that the group can still write great songs, instead of just jam and see what happens, like in previous records.
Things this time might have follow some kind of twisted plan, which in the end worked. Released on Kirk Hammett’s 54th birthday, this album has a song dedicated to Lemmy of Motörhead called “Murder One”, who have been cited by Metallica as a major influence, and Lemmy was a great fan of Metallica as well. We think that he would be proud of “his” song. There’s a special edition with a 3rd cd, which has a part of live verions, a Ronnie James Dio Medley of “Rising”, and two great covers of Deep Purple’s “When a Blind Man Cries”, and Iron Maiden’s “Remember Tomorrow”.
The record has great moments, but it’s not the momentum during all the play time, still the listener will get the feeling that the band is back to thrash metal again, and the identity is still there and intact. Like it or not, depends on the listener, but the effort is irrefutable, added to the fact the band released a videoclip for each song of the record.
