After six years without new albums, Metallica finally returned to the studio. The result is 72 Seasons , the eleventh album in the career of the thrash metal giants, a pure album in the band's formula, but one that also shows a moment of balance in the group's career.
There's no way around it: the strength and (possible) weakness of 72 Seasons is that it delivers Metallica sounding exactly as you'd expect from the band. It features powerful lyrics about escaping oneself and mental battles, darker riffs and characteristic solos, with the intensity and weight of high-quality metal.
For a band whose more experimental journeys have always provoked adverse reactions from the public, from the commercial metal of The Black Album , the ironic Load and Reload , and the conflicted and almost juvenile sound of St. Anger , firmly delving into their own DNA might seem like too safe a step, but it can also be interpreted as an internal moment for the band.
“But now, with this album, and certainly as we get older, we fight less and less and have fewer and fewer disagreements. I think we made this record without any fighting. Nobody was yelling or screaming or doing anything insane. There was no policing or 'it's going to be my way'. There was none of that,” Lars Ulrich said about the project.
The album's concept itself stems from a reflection that can only be appreciated with the proper perspective as one ages. The 72 seasons of the title are a categorization of the early stages of a human being's life up to the age of 18, according to a book about childhood that James Hetfield was reading.
“How do you evolve, grow, mature, and develop your own ideas and identity after those first 72 seasons of the year? Some things are harder than others – you know, some things you can’t help but see and they’ll be with you for the rest of your life, and other things you can rewind the tape and make a new one. So that’s the really interesting part for me, is how you’re able to deal with those situations as an adult and a mature person,” the frontman .
Metallica is older, and that's reflected in everything, from the relationship between the members to their individual states of mind, as exemplified by Hetfield's outburst in Brazil about often doubting his own abilities.
But somehow, the band manages to address these themes in a way that is completely cohesive with their own sound and discography, delving into the roots of what defines Metallica's sound in this new phase of their life and career, in the search for that eternal source of energy and vitality that music provides.
Wikimetal Recommends album, 72 Seasons, is precisely that. Whether this adherence to Metallica's pure formula is the band's greatest strength or weakness is not for us to answer at the moment, but it's certainly an album worth listening to.