Metallica – Louder, Faster, Stronger

Metallica are certainly not the same alcoholic speed-metal loons who recorded Eighties fight songs like ”˜Seek and Destroy’ and ”˜No Remorse.’ They are now all devoted middle-aged fathers. Hetfield, 45, and Ulrich, 44, each have three children. Hammett, 45, andTrujillo, 43, each have two. (The latest arrival, Hammett’s second son, Vincenzo, was born on June 28.) The band that once toured like a balled fist ”“ four guys in a single tour bus, around the same table in a bar ”“ is rarely together in transit; members frequently travel separately, with their families. The Danish-born Ulrich is spending much of this summer European tour based inCopenha­gen, commuting to shows by chartered jet with his three sons and his girlfriend, Danish actress Connie Nielsen.

 There are other changes. Hetfield and Ulrich still live in the San Francisco area, Metallica’s home base since 1983. But Hammett, who was born in that city, moved to Hawaii in 2006. And while Hetfield remains sober, Ulrich still loves a long night on the town and good company for the ride. “If Lars says, ”˜Hey, let’s get a nightcap,’ beware,” Trujillo warns. “You will be out until six in the morning.”

 But onstage in St Petersburg and at the next two shows in Riga, Latvia, and Bologna, Italy, Metallica play exactly like the band that made Justice and 1986’s Master of Puppets, with a cohesive fury that is all over Death Magnetic songs like ”˜The Judas Kiss,’ ”˜All Nightmare Long’ and ”˜My Apocalypse.’ They are not playing any of the new material yet, but it is hard not to miss the irony: At the same time that they have found bal­ance in their lives and made a truce between one another, Metallica have gone back to their most intense, complicated records for inspiration.

 “It was bold of them to put that movie out,” says Rubin, an old friend of the group. “It clearly showed them at their worst. But when I walked in, they were a very different band. They were together.” The album they made with him, Rubin claims, “feels like the Metallica I grew up with.”

 “I get nervous when everything becomes a sound bite,” Ulrich says, pretending to shiver, one afternoon over a cup of tea in a Copenhagen hotel restaurant. “St Anger, 2003, they don’t get along. Death Magnetic, 2008, it’s all hunky-dory. But Phil Towle said, when we were nearing the end of St An­ger, that everything we went through then would not come to fruition until the next go-round.”

Ulrich beams. “Of all the things he was right about, he was really right about that.”