The second thrash metal album in 5 days, and my second or third Metallica so far. Too much metal and punk ( and I like punk), just too much, there is more music variation than this list would imply. Thrash metal is the tedious end of the genre, it’s such a caricature of itself. I just find this so monotonous, repetitive, paint by numbers music; here’s the musical intro, song plods on, vocals drone on in that earnest way, then time change either speed up for a bit or slow down with usually a guitar/ instrumental break, then return back to plod repeating as many times as wish for minimum of 6 minutes. Nothing seems to ever go anywhere musically or vocally, and where they may be heading it’s at a glacial pace. FFS write something under 5 minutes. Long doesn’t always equate to epic, sometimes it’s just long. Think I heard they have lots of short ideas and then join them together which would explain a lot. Even when they have some variety such as the start of One they can’t stick with it and have to descend into the plod etc etc. And what’s with that simple snare sound front and centre? on every track, it’s not a great sound. I just don’t get Metallica, either on record or live ( seen a few times at festivals from bottom of bill to near the top) they just strike me as being so, so workmanlike. If it had been a couple of tracks would give this a higher score but the cumulative effect of long song after long song of rinse and repeat over an hour is like watching a film of someone laying road all day, some brief interest in what is happening at first but then tedious repetitive boredom afterwards. 1.5 Stars