Oh my fucking god.

Metallica is back in a big way with 2008’s implausibly exceptional Death Magnetic. Their best album in 17 years and one of the best pure metal albums of the millennium finds the band cutting a fierce swath of diabolical thrash metal through 10 superb tracks of metal brilliance.

After attempting to sound “raw” on St. Anger and dropping two records of hard rock sanitation prior to that, Metallica’s ninth studio album is mostly fast as fuck and places the 40-something thrashers in the middle of a set of songs that contain enough unruly energy to fuel a jumbo jet filled with psychopaths.

The bashing and hammering is reminiscent of their late-80s insanity, making Rick Rubin a perfect fit for the proceedings. The recording was done at Sound City Studios, marking the first time the band has recorded outside of the Bay Area since their self-titled 1991 masterpiece. After mixing songs and performing a few new ones live at various concerts, Death Magnetic was finally ready to be released to a famished public.

It hits stores on September 12, 2008.

The first conspicuous thing about the record is that the songs are lengthy and colossal. There are two tracks over the eight-minute-mark and all of them exceed five minutes. And for the first time since …And Justice For All, there’s an instrumental cut.

A heartbeat starts things off unhurriedly on “That Was Just Your Life,” a haunting song with a nice slow guitar build and an ear-splitting preface that explodes in about six different directions to formulate a proper thrash stunner. Lars Ulrich keeps a feverish velocity and James Hetfield’s vocals tear through it. The breathless pace is a solid warning of what is to come.

“The End of the Line” continues the Metallica song structure that coats the album, launching an extended introduction that leads into a weighty jam of Kirk Hammett and Hetfield guitars. It has a great “live” feel, as though the track was cut in one take with illimitable energy prevailing over the proceedings. Watch for Hammett’s searing solo, too.

Robert Trujillo’s bass accentuates the deafening intro to “Broken, Beat, & Scarred.” The tune’s riff is the showstopper as it cuts through the air like a blade through tissue and gives the song another rhythm above Ulrich’s clattering milieu. Heavy as it is, it’s actually strangely funky and harmonious too. And Hetfield’s “What don’t kill ya make ya more strong” lyrics make the whole thing kind of…optimistic?

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