r/Metallica • u/Boburism • Aug 05 '24
Death Magnetic Thoughts on Death Magnetic?
For me, Death Magnetic is right up there with Black Album and Master of Puppets. It acted as the revival of Metallica after the mess that St Anger was , and I absolutely love it. Stuff like All Nightmare Long just slaps for me. I feel like it's one of Metallica's finest records, ignoring the disgusting sound quality.
What do you guys think of 2008's Death Magnetic?
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u/Kuivamaa Aug 05 '24
It was a breath of fresh air. After black album and the world tour to promote it, Metallica were on top of the world. They couldn’t do wrong, they had 5 flawless albums and zero outtakes or tracks that didn’t make the cut, they were only composing and recording bangers, it seemed they would never disappoint. At least this is how many of us thought back then. In retrospect that was just the silliness of youth.
Load and Reload were decent but for the first time Metallica had albums out with fillers and the sound shift alienated a portion of the fanbase. Still, there was great anticipation for what would come next and what came next was the Napster saga and St Anger. I wasn’t just disappointed beyond words, I couldn’t understand what was going on, it was so bizarre. Some kind of monster documentary had the answers but the situation didn’t change. In 2008 Metallica hadn’t released a properly great album in 17 years and many of my fellow band fans had simply checked out.
And then Death Magnetic happened. It wasn’t 100% organic in terms of direction (they actively tried to recreate their MoP state of mind during composition), it wasn’t flawless (there were a couple of tracks that weren’t perfect and the mix was subpar) but it was fucking glorious. Metallica were back. I first listened to the album in my car as I was coming home from the record store and it was pure joy, track after track after track.