Low Culture:Megadeth, Metallica, Mastodon fight it out

Halloween has always been a very metal holiday. Demons and ghosts and blood and horror? Brutal. But when Metallica and Megadeth released albums on Oct. 31, this Halloween was set to be a doozy. Too bad it sucked.

First off, Metallica's collaboration album (with Lou Reed) was terrible. Like, rip my skin off terrible. Like flay my eyeball terrible. Like stab me in the knee, then rip my whole leg off terrible.

I listened through the album once and only once. If I never have to hear any song or reference to it again, I'll still die a little sadder than I would have before Lulu. I'm never going to reclaim that happiness. People are going to ask me what the happiest day in my life was, and I'm going to say the day before I listened to Lulu. That's how bad it was. Why was it so bad? Well, that's actually pretty simple. Metallica is really good metal. Lou Reed is kinda sorta famous for being kinda sorta good fifty years ago. He's the front man to The Velvet Underground, which I didn't actually know until I Googled it. I've listened to some of his stuff since then and give him a very lukewarm thumb up.

Anyway, you know how sometimes something is more than the sum of its parts? This album is less than the sum of its parts. Metallica on their own? Spectacular. Lou Reed on his own? Not my taste, but probably someone's. Together? One of the worst transgressions against music ever. And I know I favor Metallica in this, but I'm just going to say it. I think it's Lou's fault. See, in the land of folk rock, what he wants to do works. He wants to play a few chords, say some mildly profound crap and move onto the next song.

In the land of metal, you wanna blend the guitar and the vocals into the melody, you want to create significant movements through the music, you want to empower the bass and drums to drive your song. And those worlds don't mix. See, it'd be okay if Lou Reed wanted to write some lyrics and sing some metal, hell, it'd be okay if he wanted to do that half the time and whine about 8th grader crap the other half.

At least that would be mildly respectful to his partners. Instead, he seemed to dominate the whole album. I can picture it: Rob Trujillo lays down a monolithic bass line, Kirk Hammett plays with the key on guitar and then Lou shows up and says, "Hey, guys, let's bring it down. Chill out. Cool off." And then he bleats like a sheep for the whole album. I'm just gonna lay it on the line. Don't buy this album. Don't even tell anyone how funny my review of this album was, because just talking about it will infect them with the terribleness of it all. Don't do it. Save yourself.

Go buy Mastodon's latest album. I already wrote a review of it, but I just wanna plug it again because this is good metal. I'd heard Mastodon before The Hunter, but this made me want to have their children. As a dude, have their children as a dude. If you want to hear why you should buy it, go on YouTube and listen to the songs. Even if you think all metal is bad because you heard one bad screamo band (by the way, screamo isn't metal #futurecolumntopic) go listen to Mastodon. It'll change your mind. You know what else might change your mind? Megadeth. I know their name is idiotic, but their music is surprisingly good. They just released their thirteenth album, TH1RT3EN, and it really changed my opinion of them. They're famous as the not-as-good-as Metallica band, but here, they triumph. Megadeth doesn't make Metallica's mistake. They stick to what they're good at. Dave Mustaine, the frontman, is known for two things: socially conscious lyrics and strong guitar work. This album delivers heavily on both. Some songs are anthems criticizing government, economics, political stances, addressing topics like the drug war in Mexico, or the failure of prisons and the death sentence. Others are just badass riffs shredded in the style of "Hanger 18" or "Tornado of Souls" from their classic days.

And it's not as though Megadeth hasn't innovated. This is one of their first albums that sounds like one complete work, rather than a collection of cool sounding riffs. The best example of this is the transition between "Fast Lane" and "Black Swan." They end one song with a solo, then begin the next with the same solo's chord progression, but flipped and modulated. When I first heard it, the transition sounded like part of the same song. And then I started hearing it everywhere.

Themes in "Public Enemy No. 1" were repeated in "Deadly Nightshade." Lyrics in "We the People" are mirrored in "Millenium of the Blind." Together, the album as a whole is a complete work, not a collection of singles. And while there are definately songs that are more than single worthy ("Thirteen," the final track, is certainly most worthy of this title) the album doesn't fragment itself. Rather, it builds something larger, grander and greater.

If Metallica had learned to do the same, maybe Lulu could have been their best album yet. Still, it's always good to see a good band rise, so maybe this Halloween wasn't wasted afterall. And, I suppose, if Lulu still gets me down, I can always go headbang to Master of Puppets.