Metallica – 72 Seasons

If you expected 80's Metallica don't bother with this album 'cos thrash metal is not present here.
This is continuation with style from Death Magnetic and Hardwired with touches from Load/Reload era.
Production is problematic with this type of pseudo thrash guitars sound which is not thrash at all,more bluesy oriented.Drums are too loud in the mix and bass is buried,not totally but you can't hear it loud enough.
Kinda they wanna thrash real hard,like on the first four albums, but not too hard because that will be too much for fans that jump on board in the later phase of their career.
Also, the vocals are standard, modern Hetfield that I find annoying in lots of songs.
After first listening,I was very disappointed but after few more disc spinning it grows on me.
Songs like Crown of barbed wire and Room of mirrors are really good.
Lux Aeterna is nice little old fashion Kill 'em all B side single which is greatly centered in the middle of the album to break the pace.
Almost every song had some good riff or nice bridge in it but also had some problematic or dull part that drag the song from greatness,and that is the problem with new and modern Metallica.
Songs like Chasing light,If darkness had a son or Shadows follow are pure example of that, practically you can say it for the whole album-good but not great....And oh boy,how great the first four albums were....

it's not my cup of tea, it's not my Metallica
and
recorded with high compression and packaged like shit

It's a solid album but man... the packaging is just annoying. You have to slide off the sleeve, open 4 flaps and remove the manual just to get to the CD. I'm fine with the sleeve but just use a damn jewel case instead of this digipack nonsense, especially at €20.

Rather then a review, it’s a question : do you have any trouble reading the European version of the cd ? I have a Cambridge CXC and, after trying out two different European cds, neither of them work.

The CD packaging is utterly disappointing. What's normally a two-fold cardboard in a digipack to make it rigid is only a single, thin sheet of bendable cardboard here. I was honestly shocked when I unboxed by copy. A band like Metallica, for a price like that, should really produce something of higher quality. The idea with the die-cut slipcase is so cool, it could have really been an amazing product. The booklet is also kind of cheap, thin (almost see-through) paper, nothing special and kinda just thrown in there.
The album itself is a big surprise, for me personally the best they have done since Reload, so a big reason to celebrate when it comes to the music. Fans of physical media, at least in the CD department, are being left behind here though.
Even though I normally love digipacks I really hope they'll release a standard plastic case version of this at some point because I doubt they will produce a higher quality digipack release for this album after the fact.

Absolutely fantastic album. I'm a big fan of all their albums but this is the first one since Load to be all killer no filler in my opinion. Have listened to it 4 times now, but it will be interesting to see how it holds up over time, HTSD grew on me even more over the past few years.