The new Metallica song...

...is here.

My thoughts about it, as originally posted on a message board, are as follows:

Aaah, this is crappy. The opening half reminds me of "Unforgiven 2", which was on, what, "Reload"? An attempt at bringing back the slow, heavy, yet emotional thing they were doing on some songs on the black album, which was in and of itself an attempt to continue the string of successful songs like that on the three previous albums, those being "Fade To Black", "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)", and "One". If you ask me, they were already pretty unsuccessful at it by the time of the black album, so of course "Unforgiven 2" was a total travesty, being a sequel to a song that was kinda crappy anyway. And now the first half of this song reminds me of that travesty. Just not good. The second half doesn't seem to have all that much to do with the first half. It's not a horrible riff, but it's pretty mickey-mouse simple and gets old after a while. It isn't fast, just midtempo, and Hammett's leads aren't even a shadow of the kind he once played back in the 80s. And also, Lars's drums sound like he recorded them using a kit from that video game "Rock Band". Plus, as has been mentioned, they're way too loud.

Metallica's been trying to get back on a righteous path ever since "Reload", and they've failed with every attempt. This is no different.