Metallica's Death Magnetic is ... well ... pretty damn good.

This isn't usually a music review site, but I picked up Metallica's new album, Death Magnetic this week.

I was skeptical, what with having been disappointed by St. Anger. There was a lot of hype surrounding this one, and how it would be a return to their older sound. Personally, I liked Load and Reload (truth be told, I preferred the latter).

I popped the CD into my car's player and listened to it on the drive to and from work. Then again did the same the next day. There's a lot of goodness in the tracks, although the quality of the sound is ... poor. There are four "pure good" songs on the album, which I've taken the liberty of putting into the Amazon MP3 player so you can get the feel for them.

• The opening track, "That Was Just Your Life", is incredibly good. Fast, crunchy guitar. Interesting singing.
  
• The first single, "The Day That Never Comes", starts slow and ends fast. It reminds me somewhat of something like One or Fade to Black, but without reaching their slowness.
  
• "All Nightmare Long" is just plain awesome. I love that chorus of "Hunt you down without mercy"
  
• "My Apocalypse" is an awesome way to end the album. It's fast and lots of violent, death imagery without the cartooniness rampant in today's "modern" heavy metal.
  

The world could have done without "The Unforgiven III", which is the only clunker on the album. Overall, it's a massive step in the right direction for the band -- their last few studio works had more clunkers than gems. I think it fits firmly into the sort of work they should have put out following ...And Justice for All and/or Metallica.

Overall, I have to give this one 4 out of 5 stars. It's no Master of Puppets, but it's definitely more in line with what the Metallica fan base was looking for.

(Yes, I know that I whored this review up with Amazon links. Hey, guy's gotta eat, you know.)