Metallica have given us our third taste of 72 Seasons. The metal titans' upcoming upcoming 77-minute, 12-track opus is right around the corner, and following a hype campaign featuring a series of TikTok duet videos, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Rob Trujillo and Lars Ulrich finally offered up the LP's latest single, "If Darkness Had a Son," today. Compared to its predecessors, "Lux Æterna" and "Screaming Suicide," this one falls more in the former's throwback thrash camp but at much more epic (seven riff-packed minutes!) length. Blast it above.
Hetfield has described the concept of the album's title as a reflection on the first 18 years (or 72 "seasons") of a person's life. "72 seasons. The first 18 years of our lives that form our true or false selves," the Metallica frontman said. "The concept that we were told 'who we are' by our parents. A possible pigeonholing around what kind of personality we are. I think the most interesting part of this is the continued study of those core beliefs and how it affects our perception of the world today. Much of our adult experience is reenactment or reaction to these childhood experiences. Prisoners of childhood or breaking free of those bondages we carry."
72 Seasons is out April 14th, 2023 via the band's own Blackened Recordings. You can pre-order it here.
