Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Almost forty years from the point of studio album introduction and the colossus and near unstoppable juggernaut that appeared in the hearts of Heavy and Thrash Metal fans, Metallica have encompassed almost every sphere at their disposal, and still the fans keep coming back, year after year, season after season.
Looking back to the summer of 1983, to the moment when the larger world and not just the Bay Area fans who had the luxury of having been the witnesses of the seismic shift in music to come, Kill ‘Em All was the product of its time, a framing that would see them culminate the first five studio albums as an ever increasing sense of popularity, could it ever have been imagined that the band would be the monster that they become…a monster which has arguably revelled in its own design and brilliance, and been the herald of its own occasional downfall.
To see 72 Seasons as anything as a natural progression would be a tale of confusion, it ranks higher than almost anything in the last 30 years, with the exception of Death Magnetic, but it also falls flat against the type of album that the band delivered when they were enjoying the sense of full blown pomp that took them stratospheric…natural progression, absolutely, for everything season must have its time, and for every season their must be a continual cycle of rebirth and renewal.
The album, which takes its title from the first 18 years of life, a period explained as when we are at the mercy of parental and societal pressures to accept their word on what we are, is perhaps a reflection of that identity itself. Anniversaries and notable moments in time come thick and fast when you’re having fun, be it 40 years or 18, there is much to unpack with those time frames, for how you see the world is not exclusive to how society has taught you to bend to its rules, but how Time has tried to break you, to raise you up, and all the while learn from every lesson thrown at you with the force of a raging fire taking grip on the memories and the absolutions sought.
Through tracks such as Screaming Suicide, Crown Of Barbed Wire, If Darkness Had A Son, and Room Of Mirrors, the four horsemen of metal salvation take another step onwards, it isn’t one of immortality, nor of decoration, but one good enough to be remembered, to have been taught a lesson by Time, and those 72 Seasons, they will last as long as the first 40 years in which strode Kill ‘Em All, for that is the nature of the beast, it is forever chalking on the numbers, it is forever hungry to keep Time at bay.
Clean, enjoyable, not as impressive as others, but mightier than some, this is Metallica taking time in the middle of the road and avoiding potential potholes and deviations that come their way.
Ian D. Hall