The past twenty five years haven’t exactly been kind to Metallica. Ever since their mainstream-rock apotheosis on 1991’s Metallica, they’ve faced a quarter-century losing streak: the bloated hard rock of Load, Reload, and Garage Inc., the snoozy live album-cum-orchestral-experiment S&M, the migraine-inducing ineptitude of St. Anger, and the recycled rage of Death Magnetic. In 2011, they teamed up with Lou Reed for Lulu, a collaborative concept album regarded by many as music’s answer to The Room—if Tommy Wiseau’s classic was twice as ambitious and half as competent—and the band’s undeniable low point (and that’s even with the tell-all masochism of 2003’s documentary Some Kind of Monster).
Money, fame, age, a lack of passion: Critics have floated several culprits for the mediocrity of latter-day Metallica. But as drummer Lars Ulrich suggested in a recent Rolling Stone interview, the wellspring of the band’s foibles also forms the basis of Metallica writ large. “The thing that I love about Metallica is that we’re very impulsive,” Ulrich said, before tacking on a subtle mea culpa: “That impulsivity occasionally bites us in the ass, because we jump before we know where we're landing.”
And so, five years after hooking up with Lou, and eight years after their last album proper, Metallica have taken yet another leap with Hardwired...to Self-Destruct, a two-disc collection demarcated not by a leap into the unknown, but into the halcyon days of their youth nearly three decades ago during thrash’s primordial period, when “impulsivity” amounted to unpredictable fretwork, breakneck rhythms, and discarded pretenses. Like Death Magnetic, the record attempts a self-conscious return to form; the only difference is that this time the band sound like they’re actually trying, and–dare I say it–maybe even having a bit of fun.
Hardwired...to Self-Destruct is a rare Metallica album without any Kirk Hammett songwriting credits, a shift owed not to Some Kind of Monster-type bickering, but flat-out carelessness: The guitarist lost an iPhone containing roughly 250 riffs, leaving him with little to contribute to the think tank by the time Metallica began cutting the album. Temporarily demoted from puppet master to personnel, Hammett readily embraces–relishes, even–his role as primary ambassador for Metallica nostalgia. Hardwired… stands as the guitarist’s most extensive show of muscle since the self-titled days. From the soaring, bluesy triplets on “Atlas, Rise!” to the fleet-footed stampedes driving “Spit Out the Bone,” his playing strikes a winning compromise between precision and wildness, lending the otherwise one-dimensional mix (undermined primarily by the anemic drum tracking, which renders Ulrich’s bass kicks little more than footsie taps) some welcome textural spontaneity.