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ARTIST: Metallica
TITLE: “The Day That Never Comes”
WEB DEBUT: Aug. 21, 2008
ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: It’s a bit hard to tell, given the very degraded quality of the QuickTime stream, but from what I can tell, “The Day That Never Comes” makes me want to echo the sentiments Idolator commenter Marth: Something doesn’t feel right here. And by “doesn’t feel right” I mean “sorta gives the impression of a band becoming its own cover band.” “The Day That Never Comes” sounds like the end result of gluing together the morose “Until It Sleeps” and the second, riffs-topped-off-with-speeding-up-and-stopping half of “One,” and layering over some particularly throat-tightened vocals by Mssr. Hetfield. Is this what the fans want: A band going through the motions that it pioneered more than two decades ago? Given the popularity of reunion and repackaging tours over the past few years, I’m going to say “maybe… no, probably.”
WHERE TO FIND IT: It’s streaming from Metallica’s official Web site via annoying “helper” apps, but if you want an embedded stream, head over to the band’s MySpace page.
It could’ve been much, much worse. Given that this is allegedly the slowest one of the bunch, I have hope for the rest of the record.
This will sound great when accompanied by that gross plastic clicking sound of a Guitar Hero guitar.
So is a new Early Man album ever going to come out?
It’s definitely a grower, not a shower. The 2nd listen made the relatively terrible first section go by faster.
Still better than Santogold.
Alot better than anything from “St. Anger”, but that isn’t saying much.
Is it just me or is Hetfield starting to sound like David Brent on “The Office” (BBC version)?
Shit sandwich.
much better than I expected. Rick Rubin did his part by trying to recapture the ‘Garage Days’ tone, but failed with the vibe, but that could be the label’s fault, or Lars. Probably Lars. Not great, but if they’d only just hand it over to good old Flemming Rasmussen to add that sweet ass Scandinavian reverb from the depths of hell it would be listenable. A for effort, but time to hang it up. You know you have problems when I’d rather listen to the Sword than this.
I can’t say I’m a huge Metallica fan, but I like some of their stuff. I almost feel bad for them, though, because no matter what they do these days, it’s never going to be good enough. If they revisit their old sound, they’re accused of exploiting their past. If they try something new, they’ll catch a shitstorm for trying something new.
Are they really relevant enough still to be held to such a high standard?