2023-04-18 10:02:25
Berlin fans are largely disappointed with the current album “72 Seasons”. Why is that? Our columnist tells it like it is.
Global Citizen Live Festival im Central Park, James Hetfield von Metallica.IMAGO/Pacific Press Agency
This is the new installment of Anselm Neft’s humorous column Spot the Error.
Last Friday, Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo signed autographs at Saturn on Alexanderplatz. A day later, an official Metallica pop-up store opened for eight hours in the nhow Hotel on Stralauer Allee. The band does a lot for their Berlin fans. But they don’t thank her. We asked local metalheads for their opinion on the new album. The answers are as depressing as 72 Seasons.
“I don’t even know why I repeat this to myself every time,” says Mark “Mettigel” Krawalski. “Every few years Metallica puts out another record, I buy it blindly and think about it once or twice: what a crap.” The trained metal worker knows exactly what he wants: “The first three albums were great. I just want to feel like I did back then!”
Eberhard Benger, a 52-year-old vocational school teacher from Wedding, takes a similar view: “They sound just like they did on the last album. They should sound exactly like they did on the first albums. It can’t be that difficult!” When asked if, as a fan of the band, you wouldn’t want to hear something other than “Whiplash”, “Creeping Death” or “Master of Puppets”, both replies loudly: “No!”
Maren Kaschner
To the author
Too mid-paced and too much Mimimi
Herbert Haarig also wants things to go back to how they used to be: “I still go to the concerts. But if they get their shit from “Load” or “St. Anger”, I’m at the beer stand and only tap my foot again with “Seek & Destroy”. He hasn’t heard the whole of the new album yet, but he already finds it “too mid-paced”.
Others, like Herta Rocken (43), complain about the lyrics: “They used to sing about cool things like war, nuclear war, sandmen and monsters from the deep sea. Now I only hear Mimimi! They should never have had therapy!”
The fans’ bad mood fits amazingly well with the new album from the metal legend, who has been calling for kill everyone, ride the lightning and let the puppets dance for over 40 years. Singer and rhythm guitarist James Hetfield roars like a mad stag about suicide, temptation and gunfire on “72 Seasons”, continues to rhyme with the syllables “-tion” and “-ic” and is on the last song of the album (“Inamorata”) ) then finally at his wits end.
Children’s songs about difficult childhood?
“Hard childhoods always suck,” says Klaus Meine, a little man with a peaked cap who we happen to meet in the Metallica pop-up store. He just wants to see what the others are doing, he says in a good mood. Meine, who is said to be a singer himself, doesn’t think the band is bad, just doesn’t understand how one can still be so grumpy at that age. “Hetfield always looks like his ice cream fell off. The man is a millionaire. Then he can immediately buy a new one.”
In the end we get a positive response to the album. Ann-Sophie von Putbus (11 years old) says “72 Seasons” is really long. “That is so cool. My dad had to buy two records instead of one.” Ann-Sophie thinks the songs are the same as her Alexa playlist Kids, only three times as long. “I can fall asleep really well,” says the qualified elementary school student. “And when the guitar squeaks like that, I wake up and feel completely fit. It’s great for my work-life balance.”
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