Lou Reed And Metallica – Lulu

Lou Reed and Metallica: Bonding Through Noise

When Lou Reed and Metallica walked the wild side together at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame anniversary concert in 2009, it seemed like a one-off jam session. But two years later, they’ve joined forces for a collaboration that’s less ridiculous than you might expect. Metallica are prog-metal maximists at heart, but on Lulu, they meet Reed halfway, often favoring the high-decibel droning the Velvet Underground learned from avant-minimalist composers: repetition, atonal overtones, traffic-jam audio vérité.

Both acts have had a thing for long songs; here, three tracks stretch past 11 minutes. Marathons like ”˜Dragon’ buzz gorgeously, emphasising power-jangle guitars or 69-year-old Reed’s Continuum Fingerboard. Things can get ponderous once Metallica start impatiently stomping, but often they turn Reed’s pretensions into something muscular.

The art-song cycle ”“ originally written for a Berlin theater production, declaimed from a female protagonist’s POV ”“ revels in dominatrix decadence and bodily fluids (“a bleeding strap across my back . . .”);
44 years after ”˜Venus in Furs,’ the words won’t shock anybody, though they try. Reed’s reading is flat enough to get subsumed in the drone ”“ but he’s still his own rock & roll animal.

Key Tracks: “Dragon”, “Mistress Dread”

★★★
Warner Bros