Metallica 72 Seasons (2023) [deluxe]

While promoting Metallica's 11th album, Lars Ulrich claimed 72 Seasons was "maybe the most friction-free record we've ever made," which is a fair assessment of the LP. Never before has Metallica seemed so comfortable being Metallica, embracing their identity as a collective and letting each member play to their strengths: Ulrich's drums are pushed forward in the mix, Robert Trujillo roams wild with his bass, Kirk Hammett gets plenty of room to solo, while James Hetfield processes all he's learned in therapy. Hetfield provides the hook that holds together 72 Seasons: the title derives from the passing time during the first 18 years of life, the period when a child becomes a man. The album is filled with meditations on mortality and morality, Hetfield looking back on his raising with clarity, not anger.

Metallica’s 12th studio album, 72 Seasons on the band’s own Blackened Recordings. Produced by Greg Fidelman with Hetfield & Ulrich and clocking in at over 77 minutes, the 12-track album is the band’s first full-length collection of new material since 2016’s Hardwired…To Self-Destruct. Speaking on the concept of the album title, James Hetfield said: “72 Seasons. The first 18 years of our lives that form our true or false selves. The concept that we were told ‘who we are’ by our parents. A possible pigeonholing around what kind of personality we are. I think the most interesting part of this is the continued study of those core beliefs and how it affects our perception of the world today. Much of our adult experience is reenactment or reaction to these childhood experiences. Prisoners of childhood or breaking free of those bondages we carry.”