Nine inch Nails - Ghosts V/VI Review

One of my favourite gaming franchises is Metal Gear Solid. The storytelling is rich, with dozens of narratives that spindle and twine across decades and lifetimes. Everything happens in the same universe, but there are two eras in which the story takes place. The present day setting is the meat of the project, while the games set in the 60s and 70s lend colour and context.This simple structuring device gives an already expansive world even more room to roam, turbo-boosting the longevity of the series.

When a musical project enters its fourth decade, the creative element is usually long gone. Sure, you have the stadium-filling, pension-pot-boosting tours, but there's an hourglass of creative energy, which slips away quickly. Take any celebrated, critically acclaimed artist you like, and think to yourself, what was their best record? You’ll find that the answer will lie almost exclusively in the first three releases. Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. No one person, or group of individuals, can be expected to remain on blistering hot form for their entire lives. So how do you stop the project from fizzling out in middle age? How do you stay fresh?

Ghosts V and Ghosts VI, (helpfully titled Together and Locusts respectively) were released together, for free through Nine Inch Nails’ official site in March. A surprise gift for these difficult times, it’s hard to see whether this was a planned release or thrown out due to the circumstances. The double project has a marathon length at 2.5 hours, and is mainly ambient and experimental. It’s not suitable for anyone wanting a gentle intro to the discography. However, it is good for stretching across the aisle to the soundtrack work that Reznor and Ross have built up, and for expanding the longevity of Nine Inch Nails itself.

Nine Inch Nails is most at home when it’s dark. The bulk of the band’s instrumental sections have been negative, paranoid pieces, like horror movie music. That’s been the case for over 30 years, which makes Locusts the most comfortable side of this project to listen to for seasoned Nine Inch Nails fans. It’s structure is also more thoroughly thought-out. One moment that sticks out on Together is the ending to Still Right Here, the final song. It explodes with a beats-laden crescendo and comes out of nowhere, jarring you awake after an hour of calm ambient dreaming. It feels like an afterthought. Compare this with Run Like Hell on Locusts, which builds naturally into an urgent peak. It’s a bridging moment after the first three songs and leads smoothly into the mid section of shorter tracks.

The best material on Locusts comes at the front. The Cursed Clock is a perfect way to start the album. The slow piano, the string instruments played percussively, the high pitched whine seeping through the mix, this is not like anything Nine Inch Nails have done before but is still familiar. The Worriment Waltz is another key piece. The gentle piano gives it some sweet Still vibes, but the lonely horns and suspended strings that drift in and out give us a slightly different flavour than we’re used to.

I don’t want to ignore Together entirely - The title track’s soft-focus piano work is a gentle sunbeam, peeking through the mist like the 2nd movement of Another Version Of The Truth. The shifting background soundscape is kept under control by the simple melody played over and over. Apart is a truly expansive, epic piece. This is again led by the piano, with synthetic backing for a mutated, post-organic feel. It is Nine Inch Nails stripped down to the core, a 13 minute song that’s like a three minute one stretched out. Hope We Can Again has those happy-Trent hallmarks - A major key bassline, gentle glockenspiel notes, and a smile behind the blackness. Together’s overall mood is one of hope and calmness, but it does wander around a bit too much and doesn’t hammer home it’s point half as well as Locusts does.

These albums are built to showcase the longer pieces, but there are some tracks that would have happily sat alongside the bite-size vignettes of Ghosts I-IV. Your New Normal, If It Happens (Don’t Mind Me), Your Touch, Almost Dawn, these songs link GhostsV/VI back to the original run of albums, justifying their status as the latest editions of this project-within-a-project. It’s exciting to think that Ghosts, each edition a freer sandbox of ideas than a “standard” Nine Inch Nails album, is a series that could be revisited at any time. Presumably future releases will be surprise drops like all that came before. Ghosts I-IV came with a simple warning on the official website - “Two Weeks!” while V/VI was just put out there one day. It’s an impressive thought that the band can have hours of instrumental pieces in the locker, ready to go at the push of a button.

Ghosts has rarely been performed in concert, and aside from a mid-set break to showcase the material during the Lights In The Sky tour, Nine Inch Nails has found it hard to put music from this series into a live setting. Whether this is an issue of personal taste, artistic licence, or mere practicality is not something worth discussing. What this does do though is give a clean break between these albums and the rest of the band’s back catalogue. The longer Nine Inch Nails refrain from playing Ghosts material live, the stronger the statement becomes - This is in a separate canon.

Like with Kojima and his storyline set in the recent past, Reznor and Ross find further depths of exploration in the Ghosts series. It’s not the main thrust of Nine Inch Nails, which allows them to relax the rules and open up the possibilities of where they want to go. It’s a great device, a trick which means they can get away with much more than they should under the Nine Inch Nails moniker. Together and Locusts, along with the rest of the Ghosts series, should be seen and consumed in this light. It would be unfair to make these records stand up to the likes of The Fragile and The Downward Spiral, and if you are going to compare these albums to those golden-era masterpieces, you will disappoint yourself. Take the Ghosts series for what it is - A different timeline, just like Snake Eater and The Phantom Pain. If you approach these albums in the right spirit, they're well worth the long run time.

Metallica - Ranked (Part 2)

05: Death Magnetic (2008)

After years in the dark forest of experimentation, Metallica came back with a swagger to record Death Magnetic. St Anger had left most of the fanbase desperate for a return to the good stuff, and the band delivered handsomely on this release. Death Magnetic is a fresh, energetic record, with progressive elements not explored by the band since the 80s. I have to confess, I’d slept on this one upon release, and only heard it in full for the first time when researching for this write-up. I was so pleasantly surprised by how good it was, I just had to put it in the top half. There are many great songs on here, the initial headline-grabber is Cyanide, a storming composition which encapsulates the vibe perfectly. Hetfield’s growl in the chorus is pure Metallica - “Suicide, I’ve already died/You’re just the funeral I’ve been waiting for/Cyanide, living dead inside/Break this empty shell forevermore”. With the elaborate mid-song breakdown and thumping interplay between the drums and Rob Trujillo’s driving bassline, this should be your first port of call if you want a highlights reel of Death Magnetic.

The Unforgiven III is another top choice. Stepping away from its other Unforgiven brothers in the ‘Tallica catalogue, it opens with a simple piano and horns section. This eventually leads into a full-blown metal ballad, with Hetfield’s favoured lyrical subjects of feeling lost and craving redemption making for some of the most mature words he’s ever submitted for a Metallica song. The Day That Never Comes is another slow piece a few tracks earlier, however it doesn’t hit the emotion or musicality of The Unforgiven III, which will absolutely stand shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the poignant tracks on the classic records in years to come. The first half of the album is virtually untouchable. All Nightmare Long, Broken, Beaten Scarred and The End Of The Line are all instant crowd pleasers, with smart riffs and pleasing hooks to win over even the most scorned of Metallica fans who experienced serial disgust at their post-80s output.

Death Magnetic was produced by Rick Rubin, who is one of the true masters of rock/metal production. His credits read as a best-of list of American guitar music, and Metallica got the same expert treatment he has afforded to so many other great bands. The songs were written in-studio, rehearsed to within an inch of their lives, then recorded live with minimal overdubs. This is the method Rubin has used for decades, and it produces high-energy, precise music, with canyon-sized sounds, thick as molasses. And that’s exactly what you want from a Metallica album. Death Magnetic also contains Metallica’s first instrumental track in 20 years, the ten minute Suicide And Redemption. This is compositionally the most adventurous piece on the album, with several neatly-arranged sections that tell a rich musical story. It’s a nod to their early output and a symbolic cleansing of the years preceding this release. Death Magnetic was a line in the sand, beginning their late-career renaissance. It was finally OK to like Metallica again. The boys were back.

04: Ride The Lightning (1984)

We’re into the big hitters, now. Ride The Lightning was released barely a year after their debut, and without taking anything away from Kill ‘Em All, Lightning feels like the first “proper” Metallica album, as it introduced musical and lyrical trends present in all their future work. While their first record might as well have been the soundboard from a well-played set in a sweaty rock club, Lightning was crafted with much more care and maturity. Cliff Burton was mainly to thank for that. The prodigal bassist had introduced the rest of the band to music and songwriting theory, and was also given more creative control during the writing process for Lightning. This enabled Metallica to sharpen their style, and put them on their way to developing that unmistakable sound that’s now world-famous. It all started here.

An immediately grabbing track on Lightning is For Whom The Bell Tolls, which is actually the first Metallica song I ever heard. The famously long intro is the most memorable section, leaving barely enough room for the rest of the song in the 6.5 minute runtime. The song is about the horrors of warfare, a theme the band would return to many times over the years. It showcased Burton’s incredible talent and remains an unshiftable monument in their live show to this day. Lightning also contains the first ballad Metallica did - Fade To Black. This is a forgotten piece these days, but at the time was a departure for the band famous for kick-starting thrash metal. Hetfield wrote the song after a substantial amount of the band’s equipment had been stolen during their American tour. In that light, the lyrics are melodramatic - “I have lost the will to live/Simply nothing more to give/There is nothing more for me/Need the end to set me free” - But what’s metal if it’s not over the top? Fade To Black set a high bar for the instrumentation and lyrical content for ‘Tallica’s future ballads, and it can’t be understated how important this song is in their history. The Call Of Ktulu is the enigmatic closing track, and is one of the most experimental pieces in the band's history. Again, this is all Burton, he had in fact written the bulk of the music before even joining Metallica. It’s an infectious, intricate piece, which summits about five different times, and is arguably their best instrumental song.

It’s important to note the geopolitical situation in the 80s when trying to understand why metal flourished during that period. The cold war was peaking at this time, the west was struggling to cope after the post-50s economic boom dipped, and the looming threat of a third world war was very real indeed. This informed Metallica’s music. Just look at the rest of the top cuts from Lightning - Creeping Death, a fan favourite with one of the most recognisable ‘Tallica intro riffs, contains biblical themes around the ten plagues and Passover. Fight Fire With Fire opens the album with a simple acoustic guitar piece before bursting into the fastest, thrashiest jam on the whole record, and is about the madness of nuclear war. The title track, with a memorable signature riff and complex structure is about being executed by electric chair. These themes - Death, war, despair, madness, they all fitted right in with what a lot of people were experiencing during that period. In that sense, Metallica found kinship and understanding with the world at large. Metal was striking a chord with the public; it was pushing itself into the mainstream. Lightning was part of that golden age, allowing Metallica to be at the forefront of the wave. They signed a major label deal in 1985, re-released this album, and never looked back.

03: Metallica (1991)

The Black Album catapulted the band into global fame, and made them the commercial juggernaut they remain today. Metallica came as a scene shift after a 3-album evolution of sound for the band, which had them getting more progressive with each release. Compositionally stripped back, this is a hybrid of hard rock and metal that doesn’t settle in either camp for too long. Lars Ulrich reflected years afterwards that this was natural, that after the complexity of the 80s they had worn out that road and had to change direction. What came out of this decision cemented their position at the very top of the pantheon of metal.

We all know the key players here. Enter Sandman opens the album. It’s one of the most famous hard rock songs ever and is their most popular and instantly recognisable track. The sounds of this tune - the signature melody, the piercing divebombs, the nice little flanged chord from Hammet right at the start, that “Yeah-heh!” from Hetfield and every note of each solo - are branded into the back of my (and presumably your) head. And you know what? I still love it! It’s got all the energy and head-nodding righteousness it did the first time I saw the video on MTV2 when I was in school. That’s followed by Sad But True, the signature riff of which is just about my favourite thing ever played on a guitar. It sounds like a sledgehammer repeatedly crashing into a brick wall, and makes me feel like I’m wearing a suit made of the skin pelts of my enemies. The song has that slick, stadium-filling sound to it, like it was made for 50,000 people to sing and furiously air-guitar to in unison. A simply ball-shattering duo of opening tracks. The Unforgiven is the quintessential Metallica ballad. The medium-pace soaring guitar in the verses are again still fresh after all these years, and with that wonderful Pink Floyd breakdown just before the big solo, it is a song of true extremes. And of course the centrepiece of the record is Nothing Else Matters, their universal radio-friendly song, loved by metal fans and your aunty alike. It wouldn’t be out of place on Radio 2, which isn’t a jab at all - It shows that at this point, Metallica were ready to explore new avenues, that they weren’t going to hide behind huge guitar walls and wailing feedback. They could be calm and measured. The song is a pure affirmation, it evokes pride and love for yourself. The lyrics are hair-standingly emotional, some of Hetfield’s best writing. Backed by rising strings and preceded by the beautifully simple intro, it makes for one of the finest moments in the band’s history.

Those are the four gleaming pillars of Metallica which allow it to be so high in this list. And while there are other good songs - Through The Never, Anywhere I Roam and Don’t Tread On Me are great, pumping jams that carry a lot of energy - It has to be said that not much of the rest of the album stands up to this level of quality. The last few tracks tail off, and while there’s not a particularly bad song on here, it’s obvious that Metallica is propped up by the brilliance of about 40% of it’s runtime. In terms of sales and popularity, the numbers don’t lie - Metallica has shipped 16 million units in the USA alone. But you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d say this is their best record. It’s still well worth it’s 3rd place here, but the quality gourmet shit came just before this album...

02: ...And Justice For All (1988)

This masterpiece, this impenetrable, unforgiving listen, the only Metallica album your weird black metal snob neighbour who’s deep into his 30s and never washed his hair will admit to liking, this is an experience and a half. The mix is atrocious, with virtually no bass and skinny tape-deck guitars. The snare sound is sloshier than the Dead Sea. The sound is pencil thin. ...And Justice For All takes no prisoners, it brushes off all judgement and is very much itself. But it’s superb. Justice is Metallica doing what they want, it is unapologetic, decadent progressive metal.

The title track on Justice is one of the great underrated pieces in the band’s discography, layered with muscular hooks and long instrumental sections. The clean/loud back and forth of the intro descends into palm muted angularity, and before you know it two and a half minutes have passed with no vocals. The mid-section breakdown is the zenith of the track, echoing the intro off the back of a gradual tempo deceleration, before throwing you back into the final verse/chorus section. It’s got that cold militaristic feel which pervades throughout the entire album, and the lyrics, as with most on this record are some of Hetfield’s finest moments - “The ultimate in vanity, exploiting their supremacy/I can’t believe the things you say, I can’t believe the price you pay/Nothing can save you. Justice is lost, justice is raped, justice is gone.” Eye Of The Beholder is another overlooked piece, with it’s proto-nu-metal sounds and frosty observational lyrics, it’s a song that half a dozen 90s bands can thank for giving them a career.

The core of Justice is One, a steroid-infused ballad that has some of the most advanced and carefully-written instrumentation the band has ever put out. The song dips in and out of consciousness; it has a major-key section the band step into that offers a hopeful peek into the sunlight. The clean soloing from Hammett to bridge the 2nd and 3rd choruses is astonishingly beautiful. A brief bit of solace between two towers of gritty distortion, it is possibly the most accomplished moment in the glittering showcase of his career. His fret-scorching outro solo is a counterpoint to this, adding to the rich depth of sounds on this piece. The band mix their thrash and progressive styles on One smoothly, Hetfield pushing his stark lyrical content over the top of Ulrich’s pounding percussive drilling. By the time the final part of the song is fully in flight, the words get to their grimmest point - “Darkness, imprisoning me, all that I see - Absolute horror/I can not live, I can not die, trapped in myself, body my holding cell”. One ends with the kind of triumphant energy only a band peaking on their creativity can do, and leaves quickly, giving no resolution to the despair of the song’s subject matter. It’s the ultimate Metallica anti-war track, they’ve done nothing like it before or since, and it is my favourite song by the band.

01: Master Of Puppets (1986)

This is Metallica’s epic. Master Of Puppets is the orchestral evolution of the band’s classic sound, it is the album which informs every other Metallica project, the control for all their out-genre experimentation and progressive development. This was the final project made by the original line-up, with Cliff Burton’s tragic death happening only six months after it’s release. Master builds on everything that came before it while giving a platform and justification to everything that was to come. It is Metallica 101. Lars Ulrich has said as much on multiple occasions; he considers Master to be the pinnacle of the band’s musicality.

The title track to this album is everything the band is about. The instant vintage of the rhythm shifting intro ensures this is a song that lands with urgency. As the signature riffscape comes into focus, the drums follow, then the vocals, with all elements slotting into a nuanced, dense pattern. As the song starts to tighten its stranglehold by the 2nd chorus the middle movement breaks down the entire composition, and here is where the band shine. Building up from a moment of silence, with simple melodies and faux-cello sounds, Hetfield’s rare half-tempo solo sails on top of the mix, announcing the first break and allowing the brutal energy of Battery to fully dissipate, before walking back into familiar territory with an A-grade Hammett fret-bashing solo. The band climb back up to the chorus for a final assault, and as the first quarter of Master ends, so does one of the best metal songs ever written.

What of the rest of the album? Leper Messiah, the pre-finale, a critique of cults and their leaders, backdropped with a stomping march, and guitar sounds that feel like a gaping black hole in the ground. Orion, an instrumental exploration across three movements giving us a peek under the lid of Metallica’s future, more progressive records. Disposable Heroes is another powerful anti-war song, outshined by One, but riff-heavy and as lyrically bleak as any moment on Justice. The Thing That Should Not Be is one of ‘Tallica’s best mid-tempo grinders; the palm-muting saws through the soundscape as James Hetfield’s towering vocal take grabs centre stage. There’s eight songs on Master, and they are all enormous.

Master was well received on release, and has been given a mountain of accolades and praise ever since. It’s one of those outsider albums that music fans who aren’t into heavy stuff know about, it’s accepted as one of those objective classics which defines a genre and deifies a band. That’s why Master has to top this list. Even if it wasn’t my personal favourite Metallica album, it would be hard to argue against the influence, popularity and critical importance of Master and put anything else ahead of it. Metallica’s history has been patchy. For every great album they’ve also released poor or boring records, often giving us rain when we needed sun. But way back when in 1986, they were a fresh, exciting group of talented young men, who managed to pool their collective power and produce one of the unshiftable megaliths of metal.

Metallica - Ranked (Part 1)

10: St. Anger (2003)

The bottom place on this list will be the least contentious of all. St. Anger was panned, both by the fans and critically. It was recorded at a time of great strain between the band members, as documented by the accompanying tour DVD released a year later. James Hetfield was recovering from drug and alcohol addiction. Jason Newsted had left a couple of years previously; the black sheep of Metallica finally departing a band he was never a full member of, while old friendships between the others started to fray. This created a transitional vibe, as Metallica attempted to win back the credibility of their early years. As with the rest of their mid-career records, St. Anger is front-loaded. Frantic is the first and best song, offering a couple of decent grooves to ease the album in. The title track follows, a seven-minuter with a pleasing crescendo in the 2nd half to carry over a good amount of energetic enthusiasm. After that, St. Anger drops sharply, and begins to drift. As 30 minutes turns to 40, you realise nothing has happened for a long time. The only other song of note here is The Unnamed Feeling, and even mentioning that aside from the rest is a stretch.

To be fair to St. Anger, it was the victim of bad timing and circumstance. After the Load/Reload/Garage inc boredom triumvirate, the fanbase were ready for something to palate-cleanse the 90s, bring back the heavy style, and usher in a new era. What they got was low-tensioned snare drums, James Hetfield literally quoting lines from his anger management sessions, (“And I want my anger to be healthy/And I want my anger just for me”) and a no-solo policy which was the most astoundingly tone-deaf feature of all on this slow, drudgey project. The band relented on that final point, with Hammett writing some cursory twiddlings into the live set to add colour to the lengthy compositions, which says it all, really. But what if it had come 10 years earlier? Would St. Anger be so reviled if it was released with the goodwill of the first five records still in the tank? That will go unanswered, like so many requests to play Some Kind Of Monster at your local metal club night.

09/08: Load/Reload (1996/1997)

I’ve put these together because they’re the same project. They were intended for release as a double album, but the band felt that two separate releases would help fans to digest their new direction. Load/Reload is almost 3 hours of what’s best described as hard rock, as Metallica shook off their metal prejudices and softened their sound. This project spawned some well known favourites - Fuel, The Memory Remains and Until It Sleeps are all from this era. It’s mixed critical reception was a contrast to the white-hot praise heaped on Metallica’s previous releases, but didn’t harm the album’s popularity, which just about kept the band in the public consciousness through a tricky period of creative curve-balling.

The band reveled in the sheer length of Load, with stickers on the CD cases proclaiming “78.59” - As if that’s automatically a good thing? As with many long running albums, Load could have done with some songs hitting the cutting room floor. Reload has a similarly prohibitive run time, and between the discs you could easily lose an hour of music without missing much. Aside from the singles, it’s the genre-busting pieces that stand out. Low Man’s Lyric and Hero Of The Day are two beautiful slow-rock gems, while The Outlaw Torn peans with huge post-grunge riffs, a nod to the peaking careers of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, whose sounds painted the decade with a ubiquity Metallica never managed to emulate. While their “standard” numbers are hit and miss, tunes like The House Jack Built, Devil’s Dance and Ain’t My Bitch are melodically intricate, separate from the background hum.

These albums will never be lauded as classics, but it’s clear that this is something Metallica just had to do. Great bands rarely record the same form of music for decades on end without losing their edge, and this is why the Load/Reload project was so important for Metallica. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t even that enjoyable, but it needed to happen, and later on in this list there are better albums which only exist because of these mid-career dalliances. Testing out new styles sharpens the senses and is oxygen for different ways of thinking. It refreshes the old ways. After this decade-and-a-bit in the wilderness, Metallica would return, loud, bright and brash.

07: Hardwired… To Self-Destruct (2016)

Metallica’s latest release, already 3 years old but still being toured, (which shows how huge the band are after almost four decades together) is a return to their harder, riff-heavy straight-up metal style they explored on Metallica. As part of a welcome back-to-their-roots renaissance that was so desperately needed after St Anger, Hardwired... To Self Destruct is a pleasant mid-range record in ‘Tallica’s back catalogue. While it covers no new ground in terms of style, the album contains tracks which can easily sit with their songs from any other era on best-of mixes and setlists alike. Dream No More is my personal favourite from Hardwired. A thick, bold excursion, with guitarwork that harks back to Sad But True, it’s about the dawn of Cthulhu (obviously). Hetfield’s triumphant exuberance as he pushes the air through his lungs to shout “You turn to stone - Can’t look away/You turn to stone - Madness they say” proves his robust vocal prowess as he moves through middle age. It’s belting stuff, and other songs like Man UNkind, Atlas Rise and Halo On Fire evoke similar feelings. The band are still enjoying themselves.

There’s nothing really that bad about Hardwired, it’s just not exciting. For each big metal banger, there’s an average tune that leaves you thirsty for the next one halfway through. There are moments which are crying out for a dynamic shift, a quieter solo, a simpler riff which go unchecked. Songs which would have received the symphonic treatment in the 80’s falter and are forgettable. The project is midfield. But obviously, Metallica are returning to what they do best, and long may it continue. And I have to say, the first few listens of Hardwired got me excited in a way I’d not been about them in a while. But once the initial interest of a new album fades away, this is just an OK record, on the whole. And by Metallica’s lofty standards, you’d better believe that’s not enough.

06: Kill ‘Em All (1983)

There’s a sacred Big Five Albums in Metallica’s release history, which is unsurprisingly their first five releases. There will be purists who scoff at the idea of one of these hallowed discs being usurped by a more recent album, but rules are made to be broken, frankly. And here we are. Kill ‘Em All, the debut album from one of the biggest bands ever was an early 80’s release which proved revolutionary at the time. While time has told that Slayer are the true kings of thrash metal, back in the day Metallica were just as important in developing the punky, raw sound of what is a uniquely piquant style of music. This album was a landmark in thrash, introducing light-speed shredding solos and double-time snare drum work to the genre, two elements that can still be heard in more recent Metallica releases.

Kill ‘Em All is a delightful riff-fest, bursting with all the energy you’d expect from four guys from California, barely out of their teens and ready to take over the world. Seek And Destroy is the centrepiece, with it’s unmistakable opening guitar line and double time solo breakdown midway through. But there’s so much more on here that’s worth celebrating. Hit The Lights, actually a re-worked version of a song from Lars Ulrich’s former band opens Kill ‘Em All with a prophetic level of energy. The Four Horsemen follows this, and is a true early masterpiece, with complex melodies threaded throughout it’s 7.5 minutes of thrash indulgence. Whiplash is another highlight, the first single taken from this album, acknowledged by numerous journalists as the birth of thrash metal.

As we all know, Dave Mustaine was a member of Metallica in the early days, and his fingerprints can be found on Kill ‘Em All - Four songs give him a writing credit, and it’s widely known that Kirk Hammett borrowed a lot from his solos while playing on this album. Mustaine of course went on to form the equally brilliant Megadeth, also loved and heralded as thrash pioneers. Kirk Hammett is such an indelible part of Metallica now, but it’s fascinating to think how different things might have been if Mustaine had stayed on board with the ‘Tallica boys. As it stands, Kill ‘Em All is a great little record, and at the time it must have been exciting to witness. But it’s quite different from every subsequent Metallica release, and there are a couple of dud numbers that leave a lot to be desired. What came immediately after is far more representative of Metallica as a whole, and that’s why I felt the need to break the sacred pentagram.

Tame Impala - The Slow Rush

The Slow Rush is a smoothed-out, homogeneous version of the themes first introduced on Currents, and five years on the griddle makes this the longest wait for a Tame Impala album yet. Long-anticipated by fans and critics alike, this is an album set to split opinion. Guitar use is sparing and textural, while compositions are stretched out over longer periods than before. Songs that would have been sub-four minutes on previous releases are now double the length. This record is meant to be consumed in its entirety, but by the end it lags. Listening to this album is an ambivalent experience. You get a definitive sense of what’s being expressed, but it’s not clear why it’s there. The floaty melodies and dulled lyrics are pleasant on some songs, but tedious on others. Kevin Parker has gone from blissed-out to boredom. Sometimes, it just doesn’t work.

For a band which has come out with such creatively smart singles as Elephant, Feels Like We Only Go Backwards and The Less I Know The Better, Rush is disappointingly absent of any stand-out radio hits. The fact that Borderline was chosen as the lead single says it all. With the distant vocal take, soft bass and uncomplicated sounds, it encapsulates a lot of the musical themes on Rush, and in that sense, it’s a worthy single. When compared to other big Tame Impala hits however, it’s nowhere near as catchy. Tame Impala have always been psychedelic, progressive even, but it’s undeniable that the project is rooted in old-school pop. The John Lennon vocals, the Waterloo Sunset moods. The simple structuring of the songs and the tight, bouncy production quality. For them to release a record without at least one surefire banger is disappointing. There will be no big TV advert contracts this time round.

What’s appealing about Rush on repeated listens is the subtleties that lurk in the mix. Each song has been carefully layered. Simple musical lines intertwine and gradually create rich sounding, well built compositions. The plush electronica that was hinted in the early days is now in full bloom. In this sense, Rush is a logical progression in the Tame Impala discography. This is an album which has a distinctive feel of evolution; Ten years of journeying have led to this iteration of Parker’s sound. It’s been quite a trip so far. However, Rush seems to be the part of the trip where Kevin Parker wanders around Malibu in a big shirt, being told he’s awesome.

If you want to talk about highlights, it can be hard to pick out songs from such a round-edged project. One song that does stick out is It Might Be Time, a song which pulses with real energy through the choruses, (though that synthy siren noise might a touch high in the mix) and the dirty bassline nodding back to the rockier sound on the first couple of releases. I do like the way the lyrics make me, a 33 year-old who still goes to festivals and listens to new music, feel incredibly seen: “You ain’t as young as you used to be (it might be time to face it) You ain’t as cool as you used to be, no. You won’t recover” Damn, dude!

The fresh piano on Breathe Deeper is one of the best-placed bits of instrumentation on the record. It makes the song twinkle and shine from the first second. The beat has that clean grooviness you got on 80s pop hits, the mainstream disco vibe that gets people nodding along within seconds. Parker’s always been good at this kind of thing, and the instant vibing that spills out from this song make it a genuine peak on Rush. He gets 2 more minutes out of the song with that mirrored, backwards section which swoops in to save the day before the song gets lost in any self-indulgent twiddling. Breathe Deeper is one of the few pieces on Rush which justifies its runtime.

Tomorrow’s Dust follows, a serene piece which sweetly drops into the running order. The acoustic guitar line and gentle strings are like a stretched-out Frank Ocean section, carrying Parker’s voice lightly through the air. It never comes in to land, though. Needless arpeggios are thrown-in, almost like they’re there because That’s What Tame Impala Sounds Like. This is the case with many songs on the album - So many great ideas and pretty sections, but with no closure. You can hear this on tracks such as One More Year, Lost In Yesterday and On Track - They are all crying out for a lift. Scene-changers and riff drops are replaced with… Nothing? Verses keep flowing into other verses and it gets stodgy too often. They aren’t particularly bad tunes, but they also don’t really go anywhere. The regal, resplendent choruses of the mid-2010s appear to be gone. We are on the comedown.

This is the most insular Tame Impala record to date. One of Parker’s key narratives is loneliness, of not belonging, or being the last one to know. While the sound on any Tame Impala project is ubiquitously expansive, it’s a thin, personal mood that forms the core. This is no surprise - Parker has done the bulk of Tame Impala’s music off his own back, and is the ultimate bedroom artist. It’s inevitable that all his music will reflect this. What Rush attempts to do is to finally end that solitude, to accept the rest of the world into his arms, but it does the opposite of that. This is a tough, impenetrable record. Parker says himself that this is about time happening to him, how people are just experiencing life without the ability to control it. This is true on Rush, the music happens to you, and pathos is a six letter word. The dreamy content fails to strike that resounding chord.

Rush distances Parker further from his audience, raises more questions than it answers, and ultimately falls short of bringing a satisfying conclusion to the first decade of Tame Impala’s history. Lonerism, though far more bleak and angsty, did a much better job of connecting with the outside world. Currents wasn’t as good, but still held open the door. Rush sees Parker retreat further, eschewing lucidity and vibrant instrumentation for vagueness, for chrysalism. Tame Impala is still an important part of the musical landscape, and while rock and metal are dozing off, it’s one of the finest guitar projects around. While the direction can leave a lot to be desired, Rush is certainly something that Parker needed to do, but as a fan, it may leave you aching for the next chapter. I won’t blame any of you for sticking on Apocalypse Dreams to remember the simpler times.

Journal For Plague Lovers - An Underrated Album

Released a decade and a half after the disappearance of Richey Edwards, Journal For Plague Lovers is a compendium of punchy art-punk songs using words he had written before he left his life behind forever. Richey handed a file of songs, sketches, poems and haikus to Nicky Wire a few months before his disappearance. Some of those came out on Everything Must Go, spawning several beloved Manic Street Preachers songs, and in the case of Kevin Carter, one of their biggest singles. Evidently there was much more to come from such a prolific writer, so Journal, in that sense, seemed inevitable. 

The band’s career post-Everything Must Go had been topsy-turvy, style-wise. Their next release, This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours, was a softened, glacial album, one that spawned some of the band’s biggest hits but was a departure from their previous work. After that came Know Your Enemy, an esoteric stab at covering all the bases of  their output to date - More of a collection of songs than anything else. They changed tack again with Lifeblood, another slow, contemplative collection of songs. After that came Send Away The Tigers, a generally well-received album with a traditional rock sound and a back-to-basics feel. It seemed as if the Manics kept apologising for the last album with each release, and never settled on one style to carry them through the decade.

Journal is an anomaly in this sense, because upon listening to this righteous, effervescent post-punk statement, there’s the feeling that after multiple releases trying to hit the jackpot, the Manics were once again comfortable in their own skin. Many casual listeners will have switched off in the mid-00s and missed this rough diamond in their back catalogue. But I’d implore anyone who gave up on the Manics after their commercial peak to give this album consideration. In my opinion, it’s only bettered by Everything Must Go and The Holy Bible.

After an initial positive critical reception, Journal has been poorly treated by fans and the band alike. Aside from the promotional tour, during which the band played the entire album to excited crowds, Journal has been virtually non-existent in setlists for the past 10 years. For a band famous for their eclecticism and playing random songs during gigs, this is a little strange. Perhaps they intended Journal to be a studio-only effort, which will stand as a monument, rather than a “normal” album to draw a couple of songs from each tour. In any case, going to a Manic Street Preachers show and hearing any song from this album has been a rare pleasure in the last decade.

Richey Edwards, during the Generation Terrorists era - Better days.

Posthumous releases usually raise ire from audiences - Even the most rabid Nirvana fans will agree the asset-stripping and liquidation of all Kurt Cobain’s unused music has been merciless. There’s a balance that should be struck with this sort of thing. Of course it’s worth putting out material after a legendary artist has died, but how much is enough, and how far is too far?

I’d offer Journal as the perfect spot between such unclassifiable points. Aside from the fact that they were sparing with the material, it’s clear that this album was crafted with the respect that only Richey’s three dearest friends could give it. It is because the Manic Street Preachers are so close, that they share so much love for one another and their music, that they are able to pull this off. Journal is their final present to Richey, a farewell tour for his ideas and beliefs.

There are many familiar cues on Journal which pique the 90s Manics receptors in your brain, dog whistles that key you in to the world of the band as they were, in the hot young space of their early years. Journal then, though a 2009 release, is firmly in the aural landscape of the 90s Manics Street Preachers sound. The film snippets before songs, the interview clips in the mid sections, the lo-fi production, the big solos that last eight bars. It’s all familiar. Take the artistic direction, too - An album sleeve from the same artist who provided cover art for The Holy Bible, which caused some controversy on release. The long, obscure song titles, and the niche intellectualism that underpinned all of Richey’s work. The band forgot the last 14 years and made the kind of music we all thought had slowly expired after their peak. The result is a wonderfully listenable slice of artistic triumph. Call it nostalgia if you will, but it contains some of the band’s finest work.

Marlon JD is Richey Edwards 101. It’s about a specific period in Marlon Brando’s life, when he retreated to an island and attempted to live simplistically. Edwards read and watched movies voraciously, and he often obsessed about people he learned about, and how they dealt with life and the pain of existence. For this bloated Hollywood star to want to divest himself of luxury and retreat to obscurity fascinated Richey. The lyrics borrow from a couple of Brando’s films, centring on the humiliation Brando put himself through, and the fact that this young handsome man turned in to what he did, a middle aged slob fulfilling his carnal pleasures with no limits. The guitarwork is fresh, shattering through the air with simple parts that add up to a headrush of noise. James Dean Bradfield’s voice skims over the top, playfully melodic, but with a grinding edge. It’s an instant, urgent Manics track, that begs to be spun repeatedly.

Journal For Plague Lovers recreates the energy of the early Manics years 

One of Richey’s chief songwriting moods on Journal is the anarchic delirium he offers on Peeled Apples, Jackie Collins Existential Question Time and Virginia State Epileptic Colony. At times the lyrics can be impenetrable, but it’s richly rewarding to see the landscapes he painted. The best cut in this vein is Me And Stephen Hawking. Opening with an immortal line “Herman the bull, and Tracy the sheep/Transgenic milk containing human protein”, it’s a high energy riff-rampage that flies out the speakers, but isn’t too intense. What makes these harsher songs shine is the ease in which the band roll back the years and cut away the bullshit. It’s instant vintage Manics. Lines with outdated terminology like ”100,000 watch Giant Haystacks in a Bombay fight” betray the specific part of history these songs came from; it feels like a time capsule of Richey’s final few months.

Richey had been in and out of hospital running up to his disappearance. She Bathed Herself In A Bath Of Bleach is about someone he met during these difficult times. A roaring 4-on-floor banger, this song holds that uneasy marriage between the troubling words and crunchy rock guitar sound that became the Manics’ calling card in the latter years of Richey’s life. The chorus might as well have been ripped from a Holy Bible session, with James spitting out four lines of simple vocals across eight bars of power chords; the closest to a hook this song could yield. Richey-era Manics were always so good at expressing the darker side of mental health with such vitality. She Bathed sits alongside such bleak cuts as 4st 7lb and Roses In The Hospital as prime examples of Richey’s writing about his desperate mental state.

The quieter songs on Journal are what give depth to this album. There are two straight-up acoustic numbers alongside William’s Last Words, the album closer sung by Nicky. The lyrics read like a suicide note, something the band have been keen to play down, but with the final lines being “I'm really tired, I'd love to go to sleep and wake up happy” alongside words about saying goodbye and talking about love for his family, it’s hard to see what else Richey would have been thinking about when writing this song. The strings are understated as they rise towards climax, ending the album with an uncharacteristic level of calmness; a denouement which allows genuine closure. 

Facing Page: Top Left is a starkly beautiful song. Mainly just James and an acoustic guitar, with the addition of a simple harp melody sweeping along in the background, it’s a worthy sequel to Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky. Richey often took feelings of hopelessness (Way down, of course I smile) and the relentless consumerism he saw in his daily life (Here is hospitality, skin care tones/Clean fresh and lines, tinted UV protection) to express the despair and self inflicted duplicity of living in the modern world. He could write big emotional acoustic numbers just as well as the angry harder songs he was famous for. This part of his range as a lyricist cannot be downplayed. He really was the full package, and one of the exceptional songwriters of his generation. 

The band in their early peak. Young, angry and very much a four piece!  

It’s easy to talk about Richey Edwards when discussing Journal, but the other three members show a good turn on this album. James Dean Bradfield, though versatile in the other forms the Manics have explored, is right at home with the more classic elements of guitar music he wades through on Journal. His riffwork and soloing is resplendent, hearing him layer melodies as effortlessly as he does is a breath of fresh air after the restraint of previous releases. Sean Moore, the unsung hero of the Manics, has a lot to say on this record as well. His composition and vision brought in the piano mid-sections, the atmospheric outros, the vocal effects, all the extra bits that make the songs last longer than they should. Even Nicky Wire enjoyed himself on this record, writing choruses and the music for key sections in several songs. Nicky made sure his fingerprints were all over Journal, along with his friends. In this way, the rest of the band show their commitment to honouring Richey. This is a group effort.

Something happens when Richey and the rest of the Manics come together in a song, something that’s been missing from their sound since he left. The creative duality he maintained with the music is irreplaceable, and entirely unique. For the first three Manics records, they formed and developed their sound between releases, but it had indelible roots in rock and punk, the DIY aesthetic taking precedence over the polished sound the band would bring to the fore after Richey’s disappearance. His influence on those early years was pivotal. The chemistry between the four young friends made them the irresistible draw they are, but it was all a vessel for Richey’s lyrical poetry.

Great success came in the wake of Richey's disappearance, but they always remembered their musical brother.

This is what appeals so much about Journal. It is a call back to their beginnings, to the brassiness of the 90s that made the band such a force, with Richey Edwards front and centre. He was the pulsing core of the Manic Street Preachers. 14 years after his disappearance, he lived again, channelled through James Dean Bradfield for one last waltz, his old friend doing stern duty to his words. In his absence, Richey Edwards fueled one of the finest records the band has put out. In the end, it was all so easy - The Manics open the book on Richey’s lyrics as if he’d just left the room. 

Of course their career reached unimaginable heights in the years following Richey’s disappearance, and they are more popularly known from Wire-penned classics such as Design For Life, If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next and Masses Against The Classes. Post-Edwards, the Manics have become an institution, they are quintessential 90s/00s British rock and will always have a place in that era’s pantheon of artists. But Richey Edwards was the essence of the band before all that, and he was the reason they were able to build such a solid base of material and catapult themselves into success. Journal is the Manics’ loving thank you note to Richey. It is an honest tribute to their bandmate, their friend, and their brother. History will remember their bigger releases, but this one is very special indeed.