Metallica Releases new Album, Featuring Unforgiven III. Sorry Dudes, Still Unforgiven.

Metallica
Death Magnetic
Release Date: September 12th

Let's start with the album art.
Come on dudes. You are Metallica. You couldn't come up with anything better than that?
I know, I know. You shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but such cliche, unimaginative and uninspired cover art just irks me.
On to the album. Here is my take on it:
Argue if you will, but after all of the huffing and puffing about a back-to-brutal-basics, reborn Metallica, I have held on to an embittered and cynical idea of what audiences will receive from this album. So as I listened to the leaked tracks, I tried my darndest to be fair and unbiased.

Now, it has been four years since the release of their last album (which was utter horse-shit). We all know the glory of Master of Puppets and Ride the Lightening will never occur again.
With a resurgence of appreciation for the metal of yore, and heavy music in general, Metallica has made another album which, at times, shows infantile promise. The album is scattered with metal anthems that last for over 5 minutes, which are heavier than what has been released in the past decade. Kudos for that, but it leaves one feeling that it is just too little, too late for these musical gods of the past.
There are musical moments that seem to be beacons of hope (the beginning of "Broken, Beat, & Scarred") that are unfortunately outweighed by pathetic and fucking weak drumming, trite lyrics and just plain bad singing.
It is definitely the strongest release in years, and saves them from becoming a parody of themselves, but it still manages to be nothing more than mediocre.
Maybe I am simply jaded.
Maybe I was expecting something amazing.
Atleast Metallagher may be reuniting.
But that is supposed to be a secret.
SHHH.