Coffin Shaker: Metallica – Hardwired…To Self Destruct

Here we go again with Metallica. Once such a cornerstone outfit in heavy metal music, Metallica has certainly undergone their mutations over the last twenty six years. While a lot of this was covered in my review ofSt. Anger, I find it necessary to revisit for their newest offering, Hardwired…To Self Destruct, an album I greeted with great caution and am so far immensely puzzled by. I can’t help but feel confused by this album as a whole, all twelve songs of the two-disc arrangement. Unlike fuller, more oppressive two-disc albums like Iron Maiden’s Book of Souls, Hardwired isn’t more than 80 minutes long, but rather is a 77 minute affair purposely broken up onto two discs, an odd move in the current time where music can be digitally acquired and stored, which makes the two discs, even if done for some kind of thematic reason, totally unnecessary. This isn’t the days of tapes, where too long a tape was more prone to breakage over time, and there is absolutely not enough content here for two CDs, which hold 80 minutes of music apiece. So, what the fuck, Metallica? 

To still be onboard the Metallica wagon requires a lot from the listener. One has to question how much leeway one gives to a band that helped to pioneer the Thrash Metal scene in the US and worldwide, spawned countless imitators and inspired generations of new musicians, and released four absolute landmark albums all before busting into mainstream acceptance and fame, where they then seemingly forgot about everything they did before, and yet retained somehow the memories of their fame and status. While the self-titled album is universally accepted, even if not enthusiastically so by more metal-leaning fans, the mid 90s follow ups are usually seen as being a band that had built a scene and then scaled a mountain of commercial success doing what they wanted to do, accompanied by a semi-serious “finally” from some, before apparently totally losing touch with the early 2000’s dumping ground of St. Anger. 2008 brought a brief return for some listeners with the really good and really underappreciated Death Magnetic, an album that was showing a little more oomph after the universally and rightly panned and derided St. Anger, while retaining some things from that album but putting them to better use: the general guitar tone, a slightly more adventurous rhythm section, the longer songs that incorporated more ideas per song than the more stripped down Loads. But unlike St. Anger’s need to cram everything the band wrote into its running time, Hardwired doesn’t include a lot of dead weight per song. Sure, some of it isn’t great, and there are songs that should have been left off in order to craft a better listen, but this album is not one that gives me the sense that it includes every second of music the band worked on. It’s like they learned from St. Anger that this kind of hyperoverkill was unnecessary.

But, let’s talk about the songs. The album presents twelve songs across the two discs of its at least spiritual layout, with some pretty marked differences between them. The opening sort-of title track is the albums’ shortest work, and is a pretty at this point straightforward Metallica composition, complete with the guitar riff/drum stab pairing that opened “Frantic”, and now apparently passes for something new and innovative in the Metallica songwriting process. I made mention of this concept several times in my St. Anger review, but this component is that kind of “What are the young guys doing these days?” inclusion, which, in 2004 or whatever may have seemed like a stab at being current, but is now already a sign of something old and worn for this band. Death Magnetic returned to the clean guitar work at the start of songs, portending an incoming metal jam, at least, something of a hearken back to the actual old days. But moments on Hardwired seem like they’re reaching back to the olden days of the early 2000s, which is a Metallica epoch that everyone knows is better left alone. Overall, the title track is a decent song, but one that starts to feel like it’s trying a little too hard. 

Follow up “Atlas, Rise!” is where things will start to get good for a bit, and the feelings of hope and enthusiasm for the album take root. The back half of the verses have an interesting vocal pattern, one that makes you pay a little more attention because, speaking only for myself, I guess, you aren’t really expecting it. I feel like this is something that is a holdover from the 2008 record, and it was a good idea to keep working on this idea. The vocals work more comfortably with the rhythm section here, rather than just laying on top of the guitars, and it is kind of fresh and exciting. Musically the song is also more Death Magnetic than other albums, showing off a more modern approach to songwriting that is not stuck in the late 90s/early 2000s like the 2003 offering so painfully was.

“Now That We’re Dead” starts interestingly enough, with a sort of 80’s KISS intro riff. Again, the vocal pacing may be the most interesting element of the song, although as a full song, this is another good one, and it slows the tempo of the album down a bit and establishes its groove. The “Devil’s Dance” of Hardwired, if you will. Speaking of the Loads, “Now That We’re Dead” provides Hardwired’s first neat lyric moment, in the form of the pre-chorus of “All sinners, a future/All saints, a past”. The quality of Metallica lyrics have been down in the deepest dumps for like twenty years now, and while they were never the greatest of poets, Metallica lyrics were at least decent, effective narrative delivery systems up to and including the self-titled album, but after that, they just fell into the toilet. The Loads have moments of neatness, and Death Magnetic is probably their most solid lyrical effort in twenty years for whatever that’s worth; Hardwired isn’t going to do anything at all to make you pump a fist in the air and claim anything here is better than lyrics from Justice or Puppets.

If “Now That We’re Dead” has any serious fault, it is that it is neither “Atlas, Rise!” or “Moth Into Flame,” the fourth track, and probably the best overall. This song is the best complete work on the album. The riffs are good, the chorus is cool, the lyrics are not attention grabbing in the negative, there’s a really good Kirk solo about three and a half minutes in. The song chugs along in the vein of the strongest moments on Death Magnetic or even older tracks like “Fuel” or “Ain’t My Bitch”.

“Dream No More” marks a return to the Cthulhu mythos, missing since “The Thing That Should Not Be”. The song itself is fine, again something in that “Devil’s Dance” kind of mold. Sort of a strange throwback in terms of lyrical content, as the band long ago abandoned the mythos. “Halo On Fire” is absolutely a Death Magnetic leftover or sound alike or whatever you want to call it. Overall the first disc of material is good stuff, not as good as the previous album but clearly building on elements of it, and I find that enjoyable, since I am a fan of the previous album.  

The songs on the second disc are almost all dull filler material, the same type of songs that bloated the Loads and ultimately dragged them into mediocre territory. Disc opener “Confusion” is kind of alright but largely unmemorable; follow up “ManUnKind” is flat out boring and lame. “Here Comes Revenge” does a decent job of getting things moving in a positive direction again, and may have been a better song were it immediately after “Halo On Fire;” but here, the momentum of the album has dissipated, and the song is merely an ‘alright’ rocker. “Am I Savage?” follows and doesn’t do much, but closing track “Spit Out the Bone” is a real good chugging, riffing, fast jam, and a real shame that more of the album isn’t like this. My first few listens to this album had me losing interest quickly with the second set of songs, to arrive at “Spit Out the Bone” and really wonder where this had been for the last thirty or so minutes of dull sound. The super deluxe release comes with a studio version of “Lords of Summer,” that one new song from a year or two ago that the band was playing live that caused a little buzz. I’d never heard it until I heard it here, and I have to wonder why it was not included on the proper album, as it easily could have taken the place of nearly anything on the second disc save for “Spit Out the Bone” and made a noticeable improvement to the full package.

And here comes one issue with this album that I can’t overlook, no matter how hard I’m trying. This is a Metallica record, their tenth. Isn’t it a little past the time where we should be saying “oh, Metallica. They’re learning what to do”? Much of Hardwired seems like it’s a fan-service type of album. A “hey, remember this . . . !” affair. If you know your Metallica lore, you probably remember that the Loads were originally planned as a double album, but for whatever reason were split into two single albums. Hardwired being a two disc release that doesn’t really need to be seems like an Easter Egg to the original plan for the 90s records. I’m sure there’s some interview where one of the guys talks about the two disc layout, and probably says that it was just time or they do whatever they want or some other nebulous answer to release in this format. Metallica has had carte blanche with the “we just do whatever we want” retort since the 90s now, and it may have once been a viable answer; but now, it’s like code for any questioning of them being unnecessary and invalid. It allows for a vision of a band that is tired of pleasing its fans, and now casts off the yoke of this oppression in favor of ‘finally’ doing what they want to do, rather than feeling beholden or enslaved to those fans. Modern Metallica is a band that breaks all the rules, even though those rules are apparently ones that no one cares about, because they are apparently governing things like releasing unnecessary double albums and making videos for every song on the album. Yeah, there’s that too. The band has apparently shot video for every song present here, apparently not aware of the idea that music videos are not at all uncommon, even now in the world where music television exists only as a brand name. But that’s nothing new either, as bands have been engaging in really ambitious ancillary undertakings for decades now, and it’s not the early 90s anymore. A Metallica music video isn’t a big deal. Remember the video for “One,” and how, besides being a good video, it was special because it was Metallica’s first music video? How many videos did the self-titled, both Loads, St. Anger and Death Magnetic birth?  

Time has not exactly been kind to the great Thrash bands of yore, but many have managed to hang in there and be, at least, consistent. Exodus and Testament have their share of critics, but have at least been doing their things, as have other second or third tier bands like Overkill and Death Angel. Megadeth keeps sliding into irrelevance, Mustaine seemingly on his way to becoming the new Ted Nugent. Slayer has, of course, been Slayer, because what else could they be. Metallica has morphed into something like heavy metal for people who don’t like heavy metal; art-metal, if you will, and if you’ll ignore the whole ‘avant-garde’ movement in the Black metal scene and its vast superiority to anything Metallica has been doing. But “metal.” Someone’s review of Hardwired makes the absolutely absurd claim that this is Metallica’s progressive metal album after referring to . . . And Justice For All as some accidental collection of long songs containing too many riffs. That poor sucker must be listening to the catalog in backwards order. Justice is Metallica taking some chances and being ‘progressive;’ Hardwired is more of this “Metallica don’t play by YOUR rules!!!!1!” crap.

I don’t begrudge Metallica doing what they want, or not wanting to do what they did for twenty five years, or anything. I don’t bear them ill will because they stopped writing Thrash metal songs. I hate this notion that Metallica is somehow this collective of outlaws these days, doing whatever without any concern about what the Industry or anyone thinks about it. Do whatever you want. But, I must say, the idea that you indicate your outsider nature by constantly asserting your ‘outsider nature’ is the epitome of being mainstream, and so one must question what the guys think they’re achieving with this twenty year mantra of doing what they want to. I have been a Metallica fan since I was in grade school in the 80s, but I find that my approach to new Metallica music has melded with my approach to a lot of older bands that I still love from my youth: I greet new albums with hopes for the old and apprehensions of the new. I generally find myself saying “meh, there’s always the old records” after not finding the new one to my liking. I’ll listen to the new stuff a few times and then leave it, opting instead for the old classics. Really, there’s only two records from classic bands that I can think of that evoked some extreme response from me: Megadeth’s Dystopia, and Metallica’s St. Anger. One of which bothered me on an ideological level, and one of which just plain old infuriates me. Hardwired is not even close to reaching either of those responses, and again does have some cool songs, kind of like the Loads do. I think at this point, I’m just super over the concept that Metallica is still some kind of rabble rousing force of metal madness: despite their boast to never stop or quit, they did long ago. Metallica nowadays is basically a hard rock band that occasionally throws out a “Spit Out the Bone” or “Moth Into Flame,” and will probably never release another Death Magnetic let alone a Master of Puppets. 

I feel like I’ve said this a hundred times in my life before this time here, but it think the band really is done being the band they were. For all the times I’ve promoted Death Magnetic, or all the times I’ve understood the Loads rationale, I think the band really is not St. Anger inept going forward, but is probably more likely to release albums like Hardwired for the rest of their career. And that’s perfectly fine; but let’s stop claiming they’re some return-to-form albums from a band that’s only now reaching their stride, because those are absolutely false claims.