Metallica and Lou Reed, in  a vivacious attempt to barrel-over all associated credibility, have had sex. Lou Reed, in his blistering attempt to reconcile youth, forgot to wear protection and happened to get Metallica pregnant. Metallica, being egotistical veterans and alpha males, gave themselves an abortion- and out came the aborted disgusting undeveloped fetus they named Lulu.

Though the imagery is disturbing, it is hardly an exaggeration. Lulu is a tried and true attempt to release something that has glimpses of legitimate musical structure, yet overall abysmally nauseating and painfully ill-inducing. I like to poke fun at the record, and just how unlistenable it can be, but if you remove the understanding that this is actual music, (which it barely is) you will have a hysterical time playing drinking games to every stupid line Lou Reed belts out under riffs that sound like they came from a High School band’s awkwardly distorted instruments.

I imagine Lou Reed wandering the streets and approaching a house, where blistering RAWR metal comes booming from the garage. He walks in the house, crawls in the garage on his hands with blood dripping from his mouth, begging to make music with these High School kids. (called Majellica, and their in their fifties). They then jam for an hour and a half, Lou Reed belting out incomprehensible lyrics that just so happen to come to mind, and they record and release it (sometimes sampling James Hetfield lines from Reload).

The group sure made this thing easy to make fun of. The album is a nauseating 90 minutes, the song length averaging around 8 minutes. And I have to be honest. I listened to this thing a few times through and still didn’t manage to get entirely through the 19 minutes of Junior Dad, even with those successive tries. Iced Honey spits out ironically genius lyrics with these recycled repetitive riffs, the thing actually sounds like the album form of an aborted baby writhing back to life. This isn’t even touching the percussion work, which managed to take Lars Ulrich’s already mediocre skills to another level of bad.

I could really sum this record up as “St. Anger with old man ramblings,” but that surely isn’t as fun. I will say that Pumping Blood is kind of eccentric entertainment, using this interesting instrumental build-up about halfway through, and hovering just below “kind of memorable.” Brandenburg Gate is fucking awful, made slightly better as a hilarious ode to a “small-town girl,” as it’s repeated occasionally (I mean occasionally as in every 3 seconds for the whole duration of the song).

I am not quite sure what Metallica and Lou Reed were thinking. I think Lou Reed has always been, and will still be considered a music legend, despite his deviating career that ran the gambit from legitimate genius to hulking rejects (excluding Lulu). Metallica, on the other hand, are sort of teetering on self-parody. Even their marketing campaign for this thing, overstated the quality of the music by a comical momentous amount, often saying this was a gift and the best thing they’ve ever done.

The modern musical landscape does promise a few things, and thanks to projects like this, we can always expect some super famous and well-renowned groups making something so comically bad it makes the masses mock in unison. So thank you Metallica. Thank you Lou Reed. Oh, and fuck you both.

3/10

Best songs—

Pumping Blood


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