Metallica Back With Heavy Chugging Goodness In New Single “Atlas, Rise!”
Bay Area metal legends Metallica have released their latest thrasher Atlas, Rise! along with an accompanying music video. Atlas, Rise! is the third track the group have released from their upcoming album ‘Hardwired…To Self Destruct’, which is set to be released on Friday the 18th of November.
PSA: People with short attention spans be warned, Atlas, Rise! goes for six and a half minutes…so strap yourself in.
Atlas, Rise! opens with a stock standard Metallica riff – It’s mean, it’s catchy, and it’s undeniably thrashy. The track features a huge assortment of these riffs, which is impressive considering how long Metallica have been around (you’d have thought they’d have run out of riffs by now!).
However, rather than just leaving this offering of impressive riffing as is, Metallica have gone one step further in writing them so as to seamlessly flow from one to the next. This writing acts as a testament to their incredible seemingly immortal songwriting abilities.
James Hetfield’s raspy vocals work especially well on this rack, adding some welcome grit and snarl. Lead guitarist Kirk Hammet’s solo work on Atlas, Rise! is also a particularly impressive addition. While he’s been criticised for writing somewhat boring solos as of late, his shredding on Atlas, Rise!, while not as insanely technical as his earlier work, places more of an emphasis on musicality rather than technical ability.
The accompanying video shows the band recording the song in their (assumed) studio/practice space. While not a ground breaking concept, the video does show that despite their lengthy musical career Metallica still enjoy playing music, and that they haven’t lost the spark that drove a young Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield to form what would become Metallica.
While not as impressive as their early catalogue, Atlas, Rise! is definitely a step up from some of the band’s previous work (*cough* ‘St. Anger’ *cough*), and alongside previously released singles Hardwired and Moth Into Flame is setting ‘Hardwire…To Self Destruct’ up to be a solid album!
