Honey Bunches of Metallica

I find myself constantly having to remind my oldest daughter that she can't just have the good stuff in life, she has to learn to do the things she doesn't enjoy either. This comes up a lot, from cleaning up her toys...

"Time to clean up your toys Elena."
"Awww man! I don't like cleaning up. You do it Daddy."

...to picking out only the oat clusters in the box of Honey Bunches of Oats...

"Elena, what about the flakes?"
"I don't like the flakes."
"You can just eat the oats. You have to eat the junk if you want the good stuff."

(The cereal thing really gets to me. If she just eats the oats, I'll have to put the flakes back in the box, since my father's compulsion to not waste food lives in me as well. That would just increase the flakes-to-oats ratio which means that people who play by the rules, like Daddy, have to eat even more junk. And that's just not fair.)

So anyway, what does this have to do with the new Metallica album, "Death Magnetic?" Well, it makes me feel like I'm eating a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats. There's a lot of good stuff in there, but I have to suffer the junk to get there.

I almost didn't buy the album. In fact, I can't remember why I did. But I'm glad I did. The good and bad is balanced about 50/50. In my iTunes database, I've given 4 of the 10 songs a 5-star rating, and one a 4-star rating.

And it's not just certain songs that I would consider to be the junk, it's portions of the songs too. This is what makes the cereal analogy all the more fitting. You don't really have a choice. If you want to get to the good, thrashing, old-style-Metallica riffs, you have to suffer through some of the lesser material.

For instance, on the track "The Day That Never Comes," which is also their first single I think, it takes a good 3-4 minutes to get through the ballad portion (which is not all that bad) to get to the really catchy and energized speed metal. And even then, I am forced to wince as the lyrics finish off with a cheesy repetition of "Love is a four-letter word." I mean, guys, come on...

Well, at least they're not saying "Yeah, yeah, yeah" anymore.

Really, though, all in all, it's a good album, and I find myself listening to it a lot (at least those 4 songs). As many online reviews have opined, it's pretty much right there between "...And Justice for All" and the black album. It's worth a listen if you call yourself a pre-black Metallica fan.