Metallica - Beyond Magnetic

I liked Death Magnetic. It was an OK album. It wasn't what it was being hyped up to be, but as a stand alone release, it's pretty good. Better than that crappy St. Anger album, that's for sure. These 4 songs come from those Death Magnetic sessions, and they're presented here sort of unfinished and in their raw, demo quality mix. And BTW, these are some amazing sounding demos! LOL Oh, it must be nice to be a zillionaire rock band like Metallica. Yeah right. Whatever. The opening track, Hate Train, sounds a bit forced, a little stiff, but it's OK. Just A Bullet Away is a twisted, smoking hott song musically, with some pretty corny Hetfield-esque style lyrics that definitely detract from the awesomeness of the song. It turns a bit ghey about midway through it though, so be prepared to fast forward for a bit before the song gets back to being good again. The next song Hell And Back has a sick riff run right in the middle of it, but the stuff before it and after it shows me why this particular song was left off the album. Same with the last song Rebel Of Babylon. It's a bit scattered and not very focused. It's interesting that Metallica released this stuff like they did - more bands should. Hopefully next time the stuff they release will be of much better quality, and much shorter. Some of these songs clock in at over 8 minutes long. Really??Available from Warner Bros. Records.

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