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Track Listing: Brandenburg Gate The View Pumping Blood Mistress Dread Iced Honey Cheat On Me Frustration Little Dog Dragon Junior Dad

Lulu is the result of a collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica, a much hated one at that. You must have already read a thousand times about how this collaboration started, and what it's based on. But just to refresh your memory and for the sake of those who don't know about it, this project was born when Metallica got together with Reed to perform two Velvet Underground songs at the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame 25th anniversary celebration in 2009. The concept of this album is taken from two German plays originally written by Frank Wedekind in 1895 and 1904. After being adapted for numerous films over the years, the story of Lulu forms the basis of this 2011 collaboration. The first single "The View" was released in September, and believe me, I was just about as skeptical about this and wanted to hate on it as much as any or all of you might have been. But I have to admit, I liked that song. I found the idea of combining spoken word and heavy metal interesting. And I was waiting to get a chance to listen to the rest of the album. Today on Friday November 4th 2011, I am home for an entire day for the first time in ages, so I finally had the chance to give this thing a proper listen.

The 2-disc, 87-minute album definitely follows a musical pattern that goes along with the story of Lulu, and gets darker, torturous and more depressing as we move along, just like the story itself. It starts off with the most upbeat and 'happy' tune on the entire album, "Brandenburg Gate". Lou Reed's vocals fit in with the music perfectly on this tune, while Hetfield yells "Small Town Girl" in the background. "The View" comes next, and I must say, I appreciate this song more as part of this album than I did when I listened to it by itself. The heavy, bluesy, Sabbathesque guitar riff and Hetfield's gritty vocals are the things I love most about the song. The next track "Pumping Blood" has a very gradual, heavy and tense build-up, and finally explodes into life during its last 2 minutes. The music on this tune is some of the best on the whole album, but I just wish it was a little bit shorter, and took lesser amount of time to build up. It could have been truly great, but still ends up as an excellent tune nonetheless.

"Mistress Dread" is musically the fastest, most aggressive and 'thrashy' song on here, but the vocals sound completely disjointed. It's almost as if Metallica is playing an early 80's style thrash metal song and Lou Reed is disturbing it with the spoken word in the foreground. So, this one also goes in the list of tunes that 'could have been great'. After a few listens though, I'm still able to enjoy it by tuning out Reed's vocals altogether. If this was played live in any sort of concert setting, I would simply bang my head to the rhythm and ignore the vocals. I commend the guitar parts, but I'm a little disappointed that Hetfield didn't contribute any vocals on this whatsoever. But then again, I'm not sure that his voice in its current state can keep up with the speed of this song, so may be that's why he didn't even try.

Reed & Metallica sound a lot more cohesive on "Iced Honey", and the song sounds almost tailor-made for Reed's voice. I'm enjoying the interplay between him and Hetfield on the vocals, and the harmony is strong. This sweet and short up-tempo tune breezes by even before you'd realize it. I'm glad it's been chosen for a music video which will be released soon, and I'm looking forward to see how the visual aspect amplifies the impact of the song. It leads into "Cheat On Me", which is a contrasting tune in every regard. This is where the 'drone' element of the music kicks in with full force, and I actually don't mind it. Reed's vocals sound absolutely great on this one, and the music combines very well. Hetfield belts out some intense and expressive vocals as well, unlike the unintentionally funny "Small Town Girl" and "I Am The Table" lines in other songs.

The title of the next song "Frustration" couldn't have been more accurate. I didn't read through the lyrics, but I'm guessing the song deals with some kind of frustration in Lulu's life. This emotion is well and truly portrayed by Reed's voice and Metallica's music on this song. And this emotion carries over to the listener as well, because it does get frustrating at times to listen to the song. This might have been intentional. If you're looking to skip the frustrating part, I would suggest you to start listening to the song at the 7:13 mark. "Little Dog" is as a very interesting tune, almost like a darker, depressing version of "Ecstasy Of Gold", and presents more of the drone element that was clear in "Cheat On Me". The album comes to an end with two lengthy tunes, 11 and 19 minutes long respectively. They move along a musical style that's very much similar to the rest of the album, albeit a lot more drawn out and challenging to listen to. I actually enjoy how gripping and tense "Dragon" sounds, and after a few listens, I do understand why it's 11 minutes long. "Junior Dad" on the other hand, is a lot quieter and melancholic, and brings the album to an apt ending.

On the whole, I certainly won't be listening to this album on repeat for too long, but after a few listens I was able to appreciate it for what it is, rather than indulge in bashing it for what it's not. Hardcore Metallica fans will most definitely hate it, because unless they are familiar with Lou Reed, they won't be able to wrap their heads around his voice. His style of vocal delivery can't be called 'singing'. It's more like a poetry recital or spoken word, and at times the album sounds like an audiobook rather than music. But that's OK, because it's his style. It's wrong to say that it "sucks", as many people have put it in their reviews. In terms of the music, you can't fault Metallica for what they've done on this album, because the music is extremely enjoyable for the most part. They have broken new ground and done things they never did on any of their previous releases. And the fact that the album is available for streaming in its entirety on the official Lou Reed & Metallica website itself goes to show that they did it purely for artistic gratification rather than to fulfill any desires of financial gain.

When I first heard of this collaboration, I was hoping for lots of vocal harmony between Reed and Hetfield, but barring a couple of tunes, that aspect is totally missing. The combination of Reed's dark, depressing recital laid on top of Hetfield's aggressive vocals had the potential to be powerful, but sadly we don't hear much of it. Also, as I mentioned above, songs like Mistress Dread and Frustration sound very incoherent. These flaws prevent this album from being a great one in my book. Having said that, the album's positives far outweigh the negatives in my opinion.

I would recommend this album to Lou Reed fans rather than Metallica fans, or metal fans in general. Rather than treating it as a heavy metal album, I'm treating at it almost as an offbeat movie, and on that count, it succeeds.