By Ryan Drever
IT WAS hard to know what to think when Metallica and Lou Reed (formerly of the Velvet Underground and general musical stalwart) announced they would be working together.
Metallica’s last effort ‘Death Magnetic’ had won back plenty of disillusioned fans after 2003’s St. Anger, so it was always going to be intriguing as to how they’d move on from here, but obviously, this collaboration could go either way.
It’s no surprise then that the resulting album, ‘Lulu’, is suitably baffling. Spanning nearly 90 minutes, ‘Lulu’ is a series of unnecessarily long rock-opera-like pieces that merge fairly average Metallica riffs with the consistently mumbled poetry of Reed.
Novelty aside, the whole thing sounds so awkward and disjointed that it takes but a fraction of opener ‘Brandenburg Gate’ to descend into chaotic levels of annoyance. Flashes of strings and other interesting arrangements save it at times but it’s a largely painstaking journey that’s only for the really curious.
Posted on November 17, 2011
0