Hello everyone, now this is going to be another album review and first official blog since my one month hiatus. Today, we take a look at Death Magnetic by Metallica, there most recent album released Dec. of 08, so its only a little over a year old.

Now, the entire theme of this album seems to be death (hence the title) with songs with names such as That Was Just Your Life, Cyanide, and Suicide and Redemption. Now I'll be honest, I haven't listened to any Metallica albums since the Black Album, so I haven't heard Load, Reload, St Anger or any of the other crap they released in the 90's and early 00's. The album starts out promising with fast guitar riffs, great solos, and pretty damn good drums, and after three songs, right in the middle, they strike you with The Day That Never Comes, All Nightmare Long, Cyanide, and The Unforgiven III, by far the best songs on the album. I do wish they had spread all these songs out in the album, rather than just have rising action towards the 4 songs, than after that the falling action with the final three songs. It makes the ending songs less important. Also, Suicide and Redemption is the first instrumental since To Live Is To Die found on ...And Justice For All. The album tries to go back to Metallica's roots, and for the most part, it does a pretty damn good job of it. Except for the fact that Hetfield's voice sounds miles different and has been that way since the Black Album. His voice sounds less raw, and more kinda western, its hard to explain, and I'm not saying its bad, just not up to par with the original, energy injecting sound of how his voice used to sound like. Their new bassist, Robert Trujilo, is good but no where near as good as Cliff Burton, or even Jason Newsted. Well all in all, Metallica fans probrably won't like it as much as Master of Puppets or Ride the Lightning, but its decent. Newcomers to the band will probrably love it, and to everyone else, its still a good album. Unfortunately, there really are no headbanging moments in this album, and I think thats where it suffers the most.

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars