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Lou Reed and Metallica: Lulu

11/11/11 || Smalley

This is one for the fucken ages right here; K should post this review immediately, or plan a new edition of our old fuck-ups list, or something. Okay, enough bugging K… Metallica, please, please, PLEASE tell me this is intentional. PLEASE tell me you were trying to fuck over your legacy on purpose. As some kind of sick joke? Because the alternative is too fucken depressing to contemplate, that 3 of the people that helped write my favorite album ever (metal or otherwise) have gone on to produce this colossal, draggy bag of pure ass. To be fair, they were improving with “Death magnetic”; despite its compressed-to-hell production, annoying vocals, and misguided attempt at capturing a more old-school thrash feel past the time when Metallica could actually make that work, at least it wasn’t horrible (but we’ll talk DM some other time). At least it sounded like they were trying for something decent at least, and wasn’t an abomination (glares at forumer Floodhorse), so I’ll still take that one any day over the 2 recorded shits now surrounding it.

But, to be fair again, it’s also not entirely their fault this time around, as Reed, besides his incredibly shitty vocals here, was supposed to have a pretty significant hand in the songwriting process; just how big of one, we can find out later. It’s like an airplane crash investigation; first you figure out why the fucker went down, then you point the finger at who didn’t catch the flaw(s) in time. For now, all I know is, while “Lulu” isn’t quite as aurally-painful as “St. Anger” was, it still seems worse when you think about its origin; I mean, at least “SA” was a disaster in a way that made sense. Yeah, it had atrocious production and completely unappealing, tiresome songwriting, but at least I understood the band was trying for a heavier, rawer sound. They failed miserably at it, and had no business making an album with the disorganized state they were in back then, but at least it was shitty in an understandable, recognizably (sort of) Metallica way.

With “Lulu”, its mere existence makes no sense; how did Reed & Metallica get the idea in their rotten, senile heads that it’d be a good idea to work together? That their styles would actually blend? What’s up with your epic career confusion, Metallica? “ – Okay, so we just tried to do a more old-school thrash album… now let’s do a record with Lou Reed of some of his unreleased songs that he wrote for this play about a German prostitute who meets Jack The Ripper! Yeah, that’s the ticket! And for our next disc, let’s record the sound of us dousing our balls in gasoline and lighting ‘em on fire!!! Brilliance!”. It’s kind of like when they tried to make a croaking Marianne Faithful work on “The memory remains”, but at least she wasn’t doing a majority of the “singing” there, and that miscalculation only lasted for one song, not 2 discs & 87+ fucken minutes.

It’s poetic; Metallica used to write about beasts like Ktulu in the good ‘ol Ancient days, but have now fused with someone they never should’ve come into contact with, in order to become this alien, incomprehensible, Lovecraftian monstrosity themselves: LOUTALLICA, with an album cover that will cause mere mortals to claw out their eyes merely from seeing it! I mean, I understand the need to experiment, and I guess Metallica was getting bored because they won’t allow solo side-projects, but at least collaborate with someone who can work with your sound. A lot of “Lulu” sounds barely more organic than if they’d just taken the instrumental portions off a random Metallica album, and jammed that together with the vocals off some random Lou Reed thing; they just doesn’t fit together. There need to be laws against this kind of thing.

But again, to be fair for a third time, there are a few very minor silver linings here; the production doesn’t stink for once (despite an undesirable, occasional “twang” to the rhythm guitar ala “Load”), James, though he doesn’t get to sing often enough, still sounds in better shape than on “Magnetic”, and there’s the extremely-rare cool moment, like some atmospheric acoustic instrumentation, or the main riff on “Mistress dread” that’s the most legitimately thrashy thing Metallica’s done since the 80’s (but even then, the rest of the acoustic shit is still boring as fuck, and they beat that one riff into the ground with fucken repetition).

On opener “Brandenburg Gate”, Hetfield and Reed caterwaul aimlessly together like two friends drunkenly singing in a bar, both past their primes, pining for old glories (which is certainly true for James). I’ll refrain from commenting on Reed’s legacy, as I don’t know much except that he was in The Velvet Underground, “Metal machine music” was supposed to have unintentionally influenced metal (and also have been nigh-unlistenable), and “Walk on the wild side” is a cool song, but judging from “Lulu”, maybe he needs to throw in the towel as well. The songwriting here (which Metallica admittedly did have a say in) is incredibly dull, awkward, and repetitive, with just about every track (some of them lasting 10+ minutes) having way too much copy-and-paste sections to drag things out. Even the short songs here are still fucken repetitive, repetitive, repetitive to the point you’re just begging ‘em put the song out of our misery. With “St. Anger”, at least the songs overstayed their welcomes by going from one shitty section to some different shitty section, so we got a variety of shit instead of the same shit, looped around.

Besides the songwriting, the vocals here are no better than if ‘tallica had just let some old, drunk, confused homeless guy stumble into the studio and just start rambling his paranoid delusions into the mic as they riff away; Reed sounds like a non-Southern zombie-Johnny Cash here with his withered, ancient, smokes-four-packs-a-day tone. Seriously, this guy’s only 2 years older than Dio was at his final live performance, and he sounds like THIS? I don’t know what the hell he’s been doing to his throat lately, or maybe not-doing in order to take care of it, but whatever the case, he should’ve known better as a pro musician. And if it’s not his fault, he still should’ve known better than to try to match up against Metallica riffs.

As for Lou’s lyrics, it’s all just a bunch of unbelievably stupid, incredibly unprofound, rambling “poetry”, uncomfortably jammed up against James’ riffs. It’s quite the surreal experience to hear him croak “I would cut my legs and tits off when I think of Boris Karloff and Kinski/In the dark… of the moon”, or say “Like a colored man’s dick/Blood spurting from me” (hey Lou, this ain’t 1972; you can knock it off with that “colored” shit), or “I am a secret lover/I am your little girl-l/So spit into my mouth” as Metallica pounds and thrashes away in the background. I get that he’s writing all this from the perspective of a female prostitute, but it’s still incredibly idiotic to have to hear it coming from what sounds like The Crypt Keeper’s great-granddad. I’m not sure what he smoked to get these ideas, but if it makes you write puke like this, then DON’T get me some of that.

“Metal machine music” has been rumored to have been an intentional joke-album on Reed’s part, and based off the shit here, I’m beginning to believe “Lulu” is one too; at the very least, it won’t be difficult to delude myself into thinking that. I at least look forward to all the parody Photoshops ala the new Morbid Angel that “Lulu” is already blessing us with. Come to think about it, fuck what I said earlier, I actually do hate, and find this more annoying than “St. Anger”. You’ve really, really fucken done it this time, Metallica.

The heavy stuff bores, and goes on for forever. The soft parts bore, and go on forever (19 minutes of “Junior dad”…? Fucken kill me already). Reed’s lyrics make for some of the best comedy, unintentional or otherwise, that I’ve experienced in a while. Become a covers band like I suggested earlier, ‘tallica, or just die already and stop murdering your once-legendary rep. Your choice.

To sum up: Escape from the Creeping Call Of KLulu, The Table That Should Not Be, lest you be driven to a Sanitarium as the Bell Tolls for Metallica as they Fade Into the Blackened dust pile of metal history. Thanks for the funny joke Metallica, now can you give us the real new album already…?

Disposable heroes indeed.

Information
Released: 2011
Label: Warner Bros.
Website: www.loureedmetallica.com
Band
Lou Reed: guitar, continuum, lead (lol) vocals
James Hetfield: rhythm guitar, second vocals
Kirk Hammett: lead guitar
Robert Trujillo: bass
Lars Ulrich: drums

Tracklist
Disc 1
01. Brandenburg Gate
02. The View
03. Pumping Blood
04. Mistress Dread
05. Iced Honey
06. Cheat on Me
Disc 2
01. Frustration
02. Little Dog
03. Dragon
04. Junior Dad

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