If you dust off Live **** Binge & Purge and listen to it in its entirety, each concert is full of those odd im-promptu bits, riffs, jams and solos - the things that Newsted, Hetfield and Hammett used to do every 15 minutes between songs, to ether let the others change the gear, have a sip of water etc. Those jams and riffs, have often better melodies and feel that anything the band recorded since Load/Reload.
I love metallica, it was once my number one band. I want them to be great, but whatever made them the legends they are now back in the 80ies and 90ies, is irreversibly broken. I don't know whether the key to success was alcohol, hunger for money or just youth. Whatever it was it's quite clear by now it is not coming back. It's not going to be one of those Iron Maiden scenarios - you know - good album, so-so album, experimental carp, weird album, what, how, when, album, good album again.
It's going to be a trail of litter, garbage and trash with occasional bottom moment for some "I am the view, I am the table, I am the beetroot" project, paused every few years for that ray of light - yet another live recording of some gigantic undertaking where the highlight are the old songs shouted out at the audience in increasingly odd and squeeky ways and all of us crossing fingers to white knuckles every time guitarists start chasing drums with drunken wah solos almost always tripping up and ****** them up royally by the end.
(Does contain swearing so not quite safe for work)
