MEN FOR ALL SEASONS

Stranger things: in their 40-plus years Metallica have gone from being a cult metal band to a commercial juggernaut and a household name. But even with new album 72 Seasons ready to storm charts worldwide they're still angry, still insecure.

- Paul Rees Photos: Tim Saccenti

A blue-skied mid-morning in Lisbon. It’s Carnival Tuesday, February 21, in the Portuguese capital and a national holiday across the country. A marching band are already striking up an imploring samba rhythm from the grand riverfront plaza, the Praca do Comercio. Lines of Mardi Gras revellers in brightly coloured costumes snake along the length of the Rua Serpa Pinto. This vaulting thoroughfare spears off the from the plaza and up the steep hill leading to the skeletal remains of the Convento do Carmo, its Gothic pillars and arches looming over the city like the carcass of a great, gutted whale.

There’s a crowd gathered at the head of the road, in the shadow of the ruined convent. In their midst a solitary musician, a busker, is picking out a weeping melody on a battered acoustic guitar. The song is better suited to the dead of a long, dark night than a street party, and at once familiar as being Nothing Else Matters. Such is Metallica’s enduring ubiquity in this, their forty-second year. Their sheer staying power is remarkable. It’s approaching 32 years since Nothing Else Matters’s parent record, Metallica, aka the Black album, roared out. More than six since Metallica last released an album of new music.

Not that the band have ever truly gone away. Last summer they played shows – festival headliners and their own stadium dates – in a handful of European cities, including Lisbon. These were trailblazers for November’s clarion-call single Lux Aeterna. Two more new songs – Screaming Suicide and If Darkness Had A Son – have followed already this year. They are precursors to the release this month of 72 Seasons, the first Metallica studio album since