Presenting themselves an autobiographical piece, Screaming Suicide is exactly what Lars Ulrich and the gang are passing off for this latest iteration of Metallica. Gone is the legacy, that may stand on Master of Puppets, but lingering on that conversation of long-gone days will be “…and then they did 72 Seasons,” a project that gets worse and worse the more it releases. Screaming Suicide is keen to turn the novel simplicity of Lux Æterna into something much less convincing. Utter simplicity and passable qualities are thrown under the bus by a track where the title is the edgiest thing about it. Metallica plays catch up with their extremely generic piece of strained dullness. Anybody with two hands and a knowledge of guitar could stick this one together.
Clean, repetitive and utterly generic. Metallica are finding their comfort in that completely dull arena. A decade ago, this track would have appeared on the lingering bonus songs of Guitar Hero II. As artificial as it gets for a band whose innovative days of rocking metal are behind them. Screaming Suicide is far, far different. The tank was emptied long ago, yet here they are. Metallica should have let it fade to black some time ago, but this will never depreciate in value to the hardcore fans whose hair grows greyer, whose leather jackets are in need of a stitching update with some new rock and roll bands. Metallica, if anything, have provided a good reason for how harsh-sounding rock and roll will never recover. Most of it was embarrassing, just Screaming Suicide makes that very, very obvious. If this is the standard set, the acceptable quality of a release, then heavy metal will die an already-expected death.
Hoping to crash through with a musing on a genuinely tough message, throwing it to the arena of generic rock is, at the very least, insulting. At worst, it is dullard music that hopes to bring about all the joys mega fans will have in hearing their favourite band crash through with something new, regardless of quality. Metallica are just puppets now, operating on autopilot and skimming through something that feels like the ghost of what they once were. Inoffensive licks and very standard, stock moments of James Hetfield drivel are a slap in the face of fans who will desperately attempt to try and find meaning in this vacuous bit of tense, poor quality. Everyone gels well at least, because Metallica’s current iteration are dead set on mundane.
It is up to those few fans out there then to extrapolate their own meaning from a track entitled Screaming Suicide. Hardly a piece to hide its meaning, but the dullness that concludes this piece might as well have been processed through a conglomerate. Insipid and insulting in equal parts. At least that is balanced. Metallica provides an utterly useless track, proving once and for all that their best years are long behind them. There is very little appeal here for the newcomer or the old hand, because neither needs to hear a completely barren track. “I’m no longer needed here / Now you’ve faced your biggest fear.” If that fear is a track this bad, then consider listeners screaming bloody murder for those responsible for it.
