#2240 Metallica - Hardwired to Self Destruct

For a few songs, this's way better than you could possibly expect to crawl out of Metallica's dusty, dried-out husk. There's a taste of the old stuff, of unstoppable gallop, of too-appropriate bitter apocalyptica, and some pretty sharp guitar moves. But the momentum runs out. It gets numbing, then boring - the tempos drag into generic sludge, the lyrics reduced to ruminations on high school notebook stuff, on songs called things like ManUNkind and Am I Savage? Still a pleasant surprise, considering 3/5