What a promising start Lamb of God had, only to arrive here, so noisily uninspired and undeserving: Wrath is a stool sample. To be routinely inspected, and flushed.
This is about as sonically interesting as a firing squad. Drums pummel. Screams erupt. Yeah, yeah. Over-produced guitars buzz deep down in the mix, emerging occasionally to a lockstep chug inside a well-defined comfort zone bookended by pinch harmonics. It’s a thrash album, to be sure, which certainly gives it license to create as much havoc as possible, but it ought to at …

What review of a new Metallica album could be had without first firing a 21-gun salute over the body of St. Anger? So let’s get that out of the way– it certainly had its part to play, but what was it? It was like a vivid nightmare. Did we imagine it? It makes me feel existential and a little pissed off, like how I feel at a funeral; like life is long and mean and disorderly, and when it passes we feel like we barely knew it at all.
But it’s …