The 2023 version of Metallica, some 40 years on from their first album. (Inset): the cover of ’72 Seasons’.

I feel sorry for new Metallica studio albums.

Invariably, they will always be compared to the band’s first five albums, which are all masterpieces in their own right.

And by that impossibly high standard, their newest offering 72 Seasons falls well short of expectations. It’s a failure.

As a naive old school diehard Metallica fan, for some reason I always hold out hope that one day they will snap out of their 30-year experimental phase and return to the heart-pumping sound that defined their first decade of existence and cemented their place as one of the greatest heavy metal bands of all time.

After all, thrash contemporaries like Megadeth, who are of the same vintage as Metallica, have absolutely smashed it out of the park with their last two albums, including last year’s release The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead!, which turned out to be one of their best ever albums, so why can’t Metallica do the same?

But it was always going to be a case of wishful thinking.

Metallica have become a very different beast than bands like Megadeth since the release of their ground-breaking self-titled ‘black’ album in 1991 and while there have been flashes of that classic brilliance smattered across their last six studio albums, they have never been able to, or perhaps been willing to, totally re-embrace and recapture their magical ‘80s sound.

However, once you park the disappointment to one side that 72 Seasons isn’t a full-throated return to Metallica’s roots, it’s actually not that bad.

And there are plenty of echoes to their classic sound with some golden nuggets of raw thrash on the album’s eponymous opening track, as well as ‘Room of Mirrors’, which features solos that sound like they’ve been ripped right out of the …And Justice For All sessions, ‘Too Far Gone?’, which almost sounds like a remix of the Kill ‘Em All classic ‘No Remorse’, ‘Shadows Follow’, which has a ‘Damage Inc.’ flavour in parts, and, of course, the album’s crowning jewel, ‘Lux Æterna’.

The fact that that song was the first single released back in November and still sends shivers down this writer’s spine after countless spins is testament to what an absolute banger it is.

It’s the one song on the whole album that fully embraces Metallica’s old-school sound, and even goes back further, almost paying homage to their New Wave Of British Heavy Metal heroes who shaped and influenced them so greatly. It’s thrashy, it’s euphoric, it’s triumphant and, quite frankly, is one of the best songs they’ve written in 30 years.

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But, as was mentioned earlier, 72 Seasons is far from a classic thrash metal album in its entirety. It incorporates a whole mix of sounds, including a healthy dose of the slower/mid-tempo variety, which have come to define the band’s polarising last three decades.

‘Shadows Follow’ and ‘Screaming Suicide’ could easily be leftover tracks from either Death Magnetic and/or Hardwired… To Self-Destruct, while ‘You Must Burn!’ is a cool cross between Black Sabbath and ‘Sad But True’.

However, unfortunately for the lovers of Metallica’s traditional sound, for some reason they revisit the dreaded Load and Reload era on songs like ‘Sleepwalk My Life Away’, ‘Crown Of Barbed Wire’, ‘Chasing Light’, ‘If Darkness Had A Son’ and ‘Inamorata’.

It must be said, in the ‘90s when Metallica decided to become a rock band, they produced a few cool tracks, and to that end, songs like ‘Crown Of Barbed Wire’, ‘If Darkness Had A Son’ and ‘Inamorata’ hold their own against tunes such as ‘Fuel’, ‘The Memory Remains’ and ‘King Nothing’.

The problem is that you don’t necessarily want to hear Metallica making songs like that. It’s a bit like walking into a Chinese restaurant and being given an Italian menu. It’s not what you signed up for.

All in all, though, most of the 12 new songs are pretty good. The riffs are catchy and will get stuck in your head, James Hetfield’s vocals sound as strong as ever and the oft-maligned Lars Ulrich deserves a shoutout because, although he’s fast approaching 60, his drumming is hard-hitting and really fast at times. So kudos to him and his ability to wind back the clock 35 years and prove he can still thrash it up.

But there are moments, like on ‘Chasing Light’, where it sounds like the band are trying a bit too hard to recapture their heavy sound, and miss the mark in doing so.

There are also a few rehashed themes from previous albums with cyanide getting a few mentions on ‘Screaming Suicide’, the phrase “broken, beat and scarred” making another appearance on ‘Room of Mirrors’, while the overarching theme of misery, and misery loving company, which was so prevalent on the second-last track of the black album ‘My Friend of Misery’, defines the final track on 72 Seasons ‘Inamorata’.

It’s certainly not their worst album, but probably ranks third out of three in the Robert Trujillo era.

Ronny’s rating: 6.5/10.