12 years old. In Australia it would be graduating Year 6 this year and moving to high school next year.

So how does it stack up compared to other albums?

For me, it stacks up well.

“The Day That Never Comes”, “Cyanide” and “The Unforgiven III” became favourites right away.

The structure of TDTNC is like those old songs that appeared as track 4 on the first five albums. An arpeggio guitar intro, a Kirk Hammet lead break which builds into the the Verse riff.

“Cyanide” and that riff which comes in at the 26 second mark after the bass groove. It’s perfect combination of all the things I like about Metallica.

And the lyric, “suicide, I’ve already died”. You know that it’s going to be a good Metallica album when Hetfield is writing the lyrics again.

The Ennio Morricone inspired “The Unforgiven III” is emotive and captures my interest. And it rolls along like a movie score instead of metal song but it’s a metal song through and through.

And the other songs like “That Was Just Your Life”, “The End Of The Line” and “The Judas Kiss” keep me interested. Even “Broken, Beat And Scared” and “All Nightmare Long”..

Three years later they released a 4 song EP of cuts that didn’t make the album called “Beyond Magnetic”.

The actual tour lasted three years but they kept on touring for a lot longer. In essence the album gave the band a 7 year victory lap before they went back in the studio to do “Hardwired”

The only thing that i don’t like is the high volume mastering. Then again, the “Loudness Wars” was happening with all of the releases on major labels at the time, so of course Metallica had to win it.