Released: April 14, 2023
Why does an album about breaking childhood patterns spend 77 minutes circling the same riffs? That question runs through 72 Seasons. Hetfield uses the title for the first 18 years of life, when other people help decide who you are before you know enough to argue. The lyrics keep returning to inherited fear, shame, temptation, and misery. The arrangements follow the same route. Riffs stay in rotation well past the point where another band might move on. Several dig the groove deeper. Other songs simply run too long. Either way, habit becomes something Metallica plays.
The title track hammers a fast low-string figure, breaks it with short bursts of galloping rhythm, then drops straight back into the churn. Ulrich marks the long run with snare fills and cymbal crashes while the underlying pulse barely moves. Greg Fidelman’s mix gives every pick stroke a hard edge and leaves little room around the drums. Nothing softens the repetition. Hetfield sounds caught inside the pattern he describes, barking the title phrase as the riff keeps resetting beneath him.
“Sleepwalk My Life Away” makes the idea more physical. Trujillo’s wah-coated bass opens the song alone, pacing through the same figure until the drums and guitars close around it. Hetfield clips the verse into short phrases, building the routine into his delivery. “You Must Burn!” slows everything to a thick half-time stomp. During the middle section, the guitars pull back, and Trujillo walks across the beat, answering Hetfield with the first backing vocal he has recorded on a Metallica album. The lyric follows blame as it spreads through a crowd. A second voice joining the accusation makes the scene uglier.
The band can still make its point quickly. “Lux Æterna” charges in and leaves after three and a half minutes, driven by double-time drums, a compact riff and a quick Hammett solo. Most of 72 Seasons has a different sense of time. “If Darkness Had a Son” repeats its central word over a tom-led march until temptation starts acting like a reflex. Hammett’s wah-heavy, blues-shaped leads scrape against the tight rhythm tracks. Late in “Room of Mirrors,” harmonized guitars race over double-kick drums, letting melody answer the chug of the verse.
Hetfield is at his best when he gives the darker thought its own voice. “Screaming Suicide” lets an intrusive voice speak in the first person, then drags the subject into the open. The hard-rock bounce denies the lyric a funeral pace. Across the album, Hetfield works from a weathered midrange, moving between sharp barks and long notes that crack at the edges. Fidelman keeps him close enough to hear the breaths between lines. He sounds less interested in playing a character here. The uncomfortable voice is his own.
“Inamorata” stretches the central question across 11 minutes. Its main riff moves with a Sabbath-like swing, leaving more air between the drums and guitars. Hetfield casts misery as a mistress he has kept around too long. Midway through, the arrangement thins to Trujillo’s exposed bass, hi-hat, and distant guitar layers. For once, the repetition has room around it. Harmonized guitars gradually rebuild the full band, while Hetfield begins drawing a line between living with misery and living for it.
So why keep circling the riffs? Because 72 Seasons is trying to catch old patterns in the act. They reset, settle in, and begin directing the song again, much as Hetfield’s inherited beliefs keep directing the adult. “Inamorata” supplies the answer without pretending the work is finished. Misery remains in the room and in the riff. Hetfield simply stops calling it the reason he lives. After 77 minutes of repetition, that small change is the break he was looking for.
Written by Rob Joncas for DeadNoteMedia.
Artist information and music courtesy of the band.
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