If the cringe-inducing, touchy-feely therapy sessions captured in the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster were responsible for 2003's execrable St Anger, you have to wonder what kind of tough love prompted this entirely superior offering. By presumably giving them a clip round the ear and shouting "just do what you're good at", producer Rick Rubin has performed the same kind of career-reviving alchemy on these lost souls as he did with Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond. Straining under the weight of an abundance of enormous riffing and bestial growls, this is the strongest material the band have written in 20 years: they are finally acknowledging their legacy as thrash-metal pioneers, but without retreading old ground. That the California four-piece chose to release The Day That Never Comes - by far the album's weakest track - as a single shows that they haven't quite shaken their propensity to make poor artistic decisions. But there can be no doubt the real Metallica -the riff-forging monsters of rock, not the highly strung ninnies on the psychotherapist's couch - are back.
CD: Rock review: Metallica, Death Magnetic
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