Death Magnetic Album Launch

Ladies and gentlemen and fellow Metallica-heads, the wait is finally over! Its been a long few months for me, ever since the day I heard that ‘Death Magnetic’ was going to unleashed on the 12^th of September. Days became nights, nights became weeks and weeks became years(no shit!! seriously!!!) but 12^th September had finally arrived.

I’ve downloaded a few unreleased Metallica tracks in the last few weeks which were supposed to be headlining the album, but those never made the final cut and I downloaded fake versions of the Metallica songs( bloody Limewire!!). The Unforgiven 3 I downloaded was an acoustic ballad and the vocalist sounded like Adam Lavigne on steroids, so I knew something was wrong. I guessed the first taste of Death Magnetic for me would be straight at the ‘Vh1 and Jack Daniels Metallica: Death Magnetic launch’ at Hard Rock Café in Mumbai.

The new concept of releasing international rock/metal band’s albums at HRC along with having listening sessions seems pretty intriguing and has been done with Coldplay’s recent album release a couple of months ago , so I thought oh well , why not give it a shot!!!! HRC was packed to the rafters with fans donning Metallica t-shirts who were all sticking their tongues out , waiting eagerly for the launch to start!!! Everyone was wondering what the launch would be about, would there be Metallica stalls selling the latest album, would there be Indian bands paying tribute to Metallica?? Heck some delusional feckers were hoping maybe HRC could jet down Metallica to officially launch the album, cut the ribbons and sign our CDS .

The night started at 9.30 with a talented band called ‘The Echoes’ taking centre stage playing a mixture of covers and their originals such as ‘I need you’ and ‘No escape’ which were pretty impressive , but the night was all about Metallica. And at around 10.15, The echoes took a break from stage to make way for the man himself, ‘Mihir Joshi’, the host for the night. Mihir probably received the loudest reception ever from the near capacity crowd from Hard Rock when he announced the start of The Metallica launch. This is how it went, Mihir would announce the name of the song and the song would play with all its might on the exceptional quality sound system at Hard Rock. The exuberance quickly turned into agitation as Mihir would only play bits and pieces of each song to interrupt its proceedings in the midst. As soon as one of the songs were to break into the solos , Mihir would urge the dj to stop playing , but would urge the crowd to start playing his Metallica quiz which was pretty vexing as all the die hard fans were there for the metal and not for his schoolboy questions . Since only half of all the songs were played, It would be unfair to judge the album as the songs did not seem to follow a structure like the relatively new albums (Verse-chorus-verse-chorus-10 second solo-chorus) but seemed to have the structure of the old school metallica albums(long intro- chorus- verse- bridge- chorus- long solo- outro) which had encouraging signs of what was to come in the remaining one hour. It was like listening to songs off Amazon. You know those 60 second previews they give on the site before it says ‘BUY THE ALBUM’!

The Metallica Quiz had some very standard questions which even my Metallica bashing/hating friend could answer such as  ‘Who was the last member to leave Metallica?? Or ‘ Name any track on Master of Puppets??’ to which my friend guessed in an almost half-sardonic half-oblivious way  ‘erm…. Master of Puppets?’ Mihir was flinging the BRAND NEW DEATH MAGNETIC ALBUM into the crowd for those who answered correctly, to the joy of those delirious fans, as the album was not being sold at the ‘Launch’!!! Hmmph!!! Some launch that is!!!

Looking at the brighter side though, the album sounds as old school and thrash like since ‘And Justic For All’ with its unorthodox structures, old school power packed thrash like riffing and double bass and snare drum beats(unlike the trash cans playing Lars played on St.Anger)  !! The vocals seem to have a new lease of life on them and Hetfield’s vocals sound re-vitalised and stronger than before. His hard work in the last couple of years with vocal instructors seems to have paid off!!! Robert Trujillo makes his studio debut and does a decent job on the album although he goes into hiding in plenty of the heavy parts just as the Newstead would in other Metallica albums!!! To sum it all up, the sneak peeks and general response tell us that the album has potential and seems worth a buy and must have on a metalhead’s cd shelf. I could not remember too many of the song names though as our host would keep saying ‘Here goes Track no. 2/3/4!’ The ones that I do remember though are ‘Unforgiven 3’ which has a melodious start with a calming feel to it on keyboards which breaks into a smooth sounding arpeggio by Hetfield or Kirk , only for the song to build up later on, just like one of those old sounding Metallica ballads  . The other songs that sounded good were ‘Cyanide’ and ‘My Apocalypse’ which sounded vintage Metallica with its crunchy power chords and deadly vocals. The general response was good, and hardcore Metallica-head Abhin Aggarwal had this to say about the album, “the album was old school dude!! I Love it because of it’s raw sound!!” 

After the completion of playing 2 minutes of each song on ‘Death Magnetic’, Cirkles took the stage with an all Metallica set list. Cirkles is an all-acoustic band fronted by Timir of Sceptre fame. Cirkles are known for covering the famous Metal numbers with their acoustic line up. They started off with ‘Fade to Black’ which had the crowds going delirious and singing along although they stopped after the second chorus (and quite understandably so as I think it’d be beyond difficult to play the solo effectively on the acoustic guitar). The highlight of the night was the medley of Unforgiven 1 and Unforgiven 2 which started off with the intro of Unforgiven 1 to break into the verse/chorus of unforgiven 2 , only to end with the chorus of Unfrogiven 2. The solos were well improvised by the guitarist as he was going to have a hard time emulating Kirk on a less fretted acoustic guitar with the hammer ons  and pull offs. Other songs that were played were ‘Turn the Page’ and ‘Nothing else matters’. I was startled to see the amazing response by the crowd at HRC( arguably the most boisterous crowd ever at HRC) which is a real relief to see after watching kiddy bands play to their bunch of friends who whisper to each other ‘Aye, which song is that? Oh Metallica?? I could have sworn it was Green Day!!’ The set ended with ‘The Memory Remains’ which had the crowd salivating all over the floor and singing the outro in full flow ‘ NANANANANAA………… NANANAANA!!’ Although I’m not an ardent fan of cover artistes, I enjoyed this band on this night,  due to the fact that the band was paying a tribute to the pioneers of thrash on this night only, and it seemed as if everyone was there for one and one reason only!!!! METALLICA!!!!

All in all, it seems that Metallica have redeemed themselves after a barren patch of 16 years, and the shambles that was ‘St. Anger’, even though it is hard to tell after listening to only half of the songs. Watch out for the proper album review by Rishi Agarwal! One thing’s for certain, this album could well  be do or die for Metallica which is a sorry state of affairs taking into consideration that they’ve achieved so much in the past , but I am sure they’ll prove detractors wrong this time. The album is called ‘Death MAGNETIC’ for a reason……. And that is because there seems to be this MAGNETIC force all of a sudden….. coming from my closest Music CD shop, Rhythm House….. pulling me towards its direction in full force and echoing out loud “BUY!!! BUY!!! BUY!!!” HAH!…. And buy I surely will, tomorrow !!! Keep headbanging guys!!!