Reed, Lou, & Metallica: Lulu

Metal & Rock music has always pushed boundaries and through various collaborations been somewhat successful, Aerosmith & Run DMC, Ozzy Osbourne & Miss Piggy…Ok not all successful. Now you can add to that list Lou Reed & Metallica (affectionately dubbed Loutallica) which at first had me intrigued then as samples came out and the media train trundled on I quickly became more skeptical and to be honest scared!

And rightly so as it has proved, imagine letting your Granddad talk through your favorite album while you're trying your hardest to listen out for that killer riff, that is exactly how Lulu sounds. Metallica have taken risks before (Load & Re-load and to some degree St. Anger) but this has to be the equivalent of jumping over the Grand Canyon on a tri-cycle. The music is fine up to a point but never really goes beyond demo quality. Throw into the mix the ambling random poetic nature of Lou Reed's geriatric vocals and the tediously over running track times and what you get is a recipe for controversial opinions which I'm sure will divide music communities everywhere. Maybe I've missed the point however; I've given this numerous spins and for the life of me am finding it increasingly difficult to think of a redeeming factor. I love Metallica and welcome their ability to try new diverse outlets for their creativity but I think this is an opportunity wasted. With Megadeth, Anthrax and Machine Head releasing quality material, Metallica should have maybe tried something along the same lines as Slash and invite guest artists to sing on each song. Sadly what we have is the ramblings of 'Small Town Girl', the God awful 'Pumping Blood' and the almost twenty minute coma inducing 'Junior Dad'. Lou Reed certainly has a lot less to lose if he had anything to lose! But the question still remains; did they actually listen back to the tracks after recording them? And who the hell encouraged this? I dare you to listen to 'Mistress Dread' and not think of a Saturday evening in an old people's home with Bernard trying to sing along to Metallica on his grandsons borrowed PS3 while playing 'Rock Band'…..I'm trying so hard to be nice but quite frankly I'm waiting for the joke to end, just like this album.

Track Listing:-
Disc 1
1. Brandenburg Gate
2. The View
3. Pumping Blood
4. Mistress Dread
5. Iced Honey
6. Cheat On Me
Disc 2
1. Frustration
2. Little Dog
3. Dragon
4. Junior Dad

Added: October 24th 2011
Reviewer: Mark Davies
Score:
Related Link: Official Website
Hits: 2619
Language: english

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