Metallica Vanquish Their Demons

What do we want from Metallica? The question has plagued the California quartet for decades. Their ’80s classics combined the reckless speed and impressive technicality of European acts like Saxon and Iron Maiden with a Reagan-era flair for the macabre. It was the perfect storm: Drummer Lars Ulrich, descended from Danish tennis pros, had the tenacity and the means to follow Motörhead on tour and study the deliciously distorted riffs and punk-rock tempos of the British New Wave; singer-guitarist James Hetfield grew up in a religious family in Southern California fixated on faith and fatalism. Together, they learned what made their predecessors and peers tick and systematically set about beating everyone at their own game, crafting faster, darker, and longer songs while rejecting the image-consciousness of the glam-metal acts dominating the charts at the time. But the tragic 1986 tour-bus crash that claimed the life of bassist Cliff Burton and the exacting bleakness of 1988’s … And Justice for All, which introduced Jason Newsted as Burton’s replacement, drove Metallica to abdicate the thrash-metal throne, a decision the band’s most recent works, including this week’s new 72 Seasons, have been loudly reconsidering.