72 Seasons by Metallica
72 Seasons is the upcoming eleventh studio album by American heavy metal band Metallica. It is set for release on April 14, 2023, by their own label Blackened Recordings. 72 Seasons was produced by Greg Fidelman, who produced the band's previous studio album, Hardwired... to Self-Destruct (2016), and will be the band's second studio album to be released through Blackened. Background In an interview with Australian magazine The Music's official podcast in March 2019, bassist Robert Trujillo said that Metallica had begun jamming on new material for its next studio album. "I'm excited about the next record because I believe it will also be a culmination of the two records and another journey. There's no shortage of original ideas, that's the beauty of being in this band." He estimated that the album would be released "a lot sooner than the previous two did... this time around I think we'll be able to jump on it a lot quicker and jump in the studio and start working. We've all vowed to get this one going sooner than later." In an interview with Australian magazine Mixdown the following month, guitarist Kirk Hammett said that the band had tentative plans to enter the studio after the conclusion of its WorldWired Tour in support of Hardwired... to Self-Destruct. He stated, "We're in our third year since Hardwired. Maybe we can get a bit more focus and go into the studio a bit sooner." Having not contributed any writing to Hardwired... to Self-Destruct after accidentally losing his phone containing riff ideas at Copenhagen Airport in 2014, Hammett said regarding his ideas for the new album, "I have a ton of material. I've over-compensated, so I'm ready to go anytime." In April 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, drummer Lars Ulrich said in an interview with Marc Benioff that Metallica could work on its next studio album while in quarantine. Trujillo told The Vinyl Guide in June that the band was "excited about cultivating new ideas" for its new album. "We communicate every week, which is really great, so we have our connection intact what we've started doing is basically just really concentrating on our home studios and being creative from our homes and navigating through ideas and building on new ideas. And that's where we're at right now". He also said that the band was working towards eventually entering a studio to record the album. In November, Ulrich said in an interview with Phoebe Bridgers for Rolling Stone that the band was "three, four weeks into some pretty serious writing" and claimed the following month that the new album would be the band's best yet, saying "It's the heaviest thing, the coolest but all kidding aside, if it wasn't because we thought that the best record was still ahead of us, then why keep doing it?" He followed up in January 2021 by saying that progress on the album had been "glacial", while vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield said in May that "It’s either touring or writing, so COVID chose for us but, yeah, a bunch of songs. We wrote quite a few songs".
Psychology, biology and astrology all have tenets based on the seven-year cycle. In psychology, you’ve got the seven-year itch—the hypothesis that humans stray from committed relationships after about seven years. In biology, there’s the popular (but not quite true) idea that all the cells in the human body replace themselves every seven years. In astrology, there’s a theory that every seven years, imperceptible shifts in the cosmos influence our lives. And then there are Metallica albums. Their 11th studio LP, <i>72 Seasons</i>, comes seven years after <i>Hardwired…to Self-Destruct</i>. <i>Death Magnetic</i> came out eight years before that (close enough). Given the title and premise of <i>72 Seasons</i>—the concept is that everything we become as adults is shaped by our first 18 years, or 72 seasons—the band were clearly thinking about life cycles. Does it have something to do with the fact that original members James Hetfield (vocals/guitar) and Lars Ulrich (drums) met just before they turned 18? Could be. But that’s all for the armchair shrinks to sort out. What we know for sure is that every studio album Metallica have put out since 1996’s <i>Load</i> has been around an hour and 15 minutes long. <i>72 Seasons</i> keeps up the trend at an hour and 17. The band’s position seems to be that though fans might have to wait seven years between albums, at least they’re getting a lot of music. And where there are long albums, there are usually long songs. <i>72 Seasons</i> has plenty of them, including the 11-minute closer “Inamorata”, Metallica’s longest song ever. Speaking of long songs: It might seem like a bold move to start off an album with a nearly eight-minute track, but when you’re the biggest metal band in the world, you can pretty much do whatever you want. The album’s title track (and fourth single) kicks off with a Motörhead-ish groove before dive-bombing straight into the rip-roaring thrash that Metallica perfected back in the ’80s. “Shadows Follow” and “Too Far Gone?” also deal in vintage thrash, the latter with a Thin Lizzy twist via killer guitar harmonies. Lead single “Lux AEterna” starts off sounding like prime Pantera before quickly shifting into a nasty NWOBHM riff. Paired with Hetfield’s lyrical reference to “lightning to nations”, it’s a clear nod to Diamond Head, one of Metallica’s earliest influences. Meanwhile, “Screaming Suicide” is a song about suicide written from the perspective of suicide itself (“Keep me inside, my name is suicide”) and “You Must Burn!” sounds like it could’ve been on the Black Album back in ’91. Beyond the obvious throwbacks, there are other moments on <i>72 Seasons</i> that make it seem like Hetfield was taking a stroll down memory lane while writing these songs. “Room of Mirrors”, Sleepwalk My Life Away” and “Crown of Barbed Wire” deal heavily in self-reflection. In the aforementioned “Inamorata”, there’s a line that goes, “Misery, she loves me, but I love her more.” That might not be a deliberate reference to Metallica’s 1991 song “My Friend of Misery”—with its lyrics about misery loving company—but it would be weird if they didn’t at least realise it after the fact. What does it all mean? That’s anyone’s guess. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait another seven years to find out.
