Rich Johnson

Metallica have been a victim of their success for years and years. Anything they do will always get compared to the legendary first four albums. I made it a point to seperate those albums from the equation and rate 72 Seasons as it's own entity. And it is a great album. I like it better than "Hardwired.." and a little less than "Death Magnetic", but who knows, that might change in time as I have listened to this album 4 times already in 3 days. Standout tracks are actually the non-singles- "Shadows Fallow", "Too Far Gone?","Room of Mirrors, and "Inamorata". The few negatives I have are that the album is too long by 15 minutes, just like all their albums from the last 30 yesrs. The obvious mentality is, "hey we take 7-8 years between albums so lets make our albums all 75-80 minutes!" And it can sound like one long 77 min song because there really isn't much variation. It had me desperate for a ballad. Hell, I'd take Mama Said 2 at this point. Bit the 12 songs, despite lack of variety, are all good to great songs.