I\u2019m sure Lou Reed and Metallica felt magic during these recording sessions. But whether I\u2019ll be able to stomach this release ever again remains to be seen. If you see this album on any music critic’s \u201cBest Of 2011\u201d lists, you need to stop reading right there.<\/p>\n
There is plenty to hate on this release; that’s as simply as I can say it. When I listened and reviewed a lot of death metal, I always found myself writing something to the effect of \u201cThe music is good, but the vocals are awful.\u201d The same can be said of Lulu<\/i>. I recognize it is Metallica\u2019s right to work with whom they want and it is their right to experiment, but I just can\u2019t see where there is a good reason to hear Lou Reed speak \u2013 he doesn\u2019t really sing \u2013 while Metallica assaults their instruments.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a constant teeter-totter of \u201cThat was cool\u201d and \u201cThat makes no sense.\u201d Sometimes it perks the ears and sometimes it makes you long for \u201cFade To Black,\u201d from Metallica\u2019s Ride The Lightning. <\/i>In fact, if you go back to \u201cFade To Black\u201d and 1984, when the album was released, and you hear an acoustic guitar on a metal album, then you have heard Metallica experiment before. In fact, you probably like that song.<\/p>\n
You may not like anything on this release. Remember \u201cRonnie\u201d from Load<\/i> or Reload<\/i> (those two releases that blur together in a pile of crap)? That sort of experimentation is similar to what you hear here on \u201cBrandenburg Gate.\u201d Starting this release off interestingly enough with an acoustic guitar strumming followed by the most quoted lyrics on the Internet: \u201cI would cut my legs and tits off \/ When I think of Boris Karloff<\/a> and Kinski \/ In the dark of the moon \/ It made me dream of Nosferatu \/ Trapped on the isle of Doctor Moreau.\u201d There are some cultural references to look up when you are bored! This is followed by the first \u201csingle\u201d or full song that most people heard, \u201cThe View.\u201d I wasn\u2019t impressed when I first heard it and it hasn\u2019t grown on me.<\/p>\n I always take the underdog\u2019s side to an argument — except this time. Lulu<\/i> is a waste of time and energy. I do not know if these two entities (Metallica, Lou Reed) will ever allow themselves to be photographed together after the media attention that surrounds this release dies down. Metallica is due to begin working on their tenth studio album in the near future. I sincerely hope that all the \u201cexperimentation\u201d that they had bubbling inside has been fleshed out as a rough draft on this disc. Some of the background riffs are okay, but they needed to be fleshed out without Lou Reed speaking over them. These tracks could have been demos that no one needed to hear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":30790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8758],"rating":[5620],"class_list":["post-42464","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-lou-reed-metallica","rating-rating-f"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42464"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42464"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}