Feeling blue? Crank up some Metallica, and you’ll feel better in no time!
In a her latest book, Your Playlist Can Change Your Life: 10 Proven Ways Your Favorite Music Can Revolutionize Your Health, Memory, Organization, Alertness and More, Columbia University professor Galina Mindlin asserts that rocking out to songs with a certain number of beats per minute can generate specific mental states, such as productivity and relaxation, according to DNAinfo.com.
Lo and behold, Metallica’s hard-rocking tunes fall into that category.
“It’s [about] how music affects you – how it can improve your memory, how it can relieve anxiety, enhance your mood, how we can use playlists for specific tasks,” Mindlin said. “Using music with certain frequencies, you really can create the desired state of mind.”
As for other jams that might lift your mood, Your Playlist Can Change Your Life lists sample playlists, but Mindlin warns that selecting specific songs is a very personal experience. “What’s right for you might not be right for someone else,” she said. “Some people love the classical genre, but some people get excited by pop. The idea is to activate as many brain areas as you can.”
One sample playlist lists songs with 100 to 130 beats per minute for “achieving high alertness when you need to focus on an important work project,” according to DNAinfo.com. Some of those sample songs include “Pride (In the Name of Love)” by U2, “Lady Madonna” from the Beatles, “Goodbye Earl” by the Dixie Chicks and “Don’t Phunk with My Heart” by the Black Eyed Peas. What’s your feel-good jam?
“I used to be a session musician before I was a wrestler,” he said. “I played bass guitar. I was big pals with Lars Ulrich and he asked me if I wanted to play bass with Metallica in their early days but it didn’t work out.”
In the January 19 edition of Rolling Stone, guitarist Kirk Hammett says the album will be the logical successor to “the black album” in the same way that Death Magnetic carried on the progressive song structures of 1988’s …And Justice For All.
The four songs are rough mixes of leftover songs from the Death Magnetic recording sessions of 2007 and 2008. Each of the songs was performed live during Metallica’s four-night 30th anniversary stint in San Francisco in December, then released to the band’s fan club members that evening.
Lou Reed says that making Lulu, his collaborative album with Metallica, wasn’t as odd as it appears from the outside. In a just-published interview with M – Music & Musicians, the legendary rocker revealed that the disc, which is based on two century-old German plays, also involved a lot of improvisation. “[Working with Metallica] was all instinctual,” Reed said. “Nobody thought about anything. It was just a great opportunity to play together. I had a certain sound in my head that I wanted to try to get, and I got it. The way we did this is that if everybody didn’t agree, we didn’t do it. It wasn’t majority rules—it was all together or nothing.”
On the heels of, shall we say, a mixed response to Metallica’s recent collaboration with Lou Reed, the metal icons are quickly shifting gears back to their bread-and-butter routine: making fierce heavy metal tracks. The guys have posted two never-before release tracks online, which you can check out via the YouTube players below. What do you think? Are the songs better than the Metallica-Lou Reed jams? Let us know in the comments section! 
Frontman James Hetfield announced Newsted as “someone who lived with us, and toured with us and did stuff with us for 14 years.” Newsted then played “Harvester of Sorrow” with the band, including his replacement Robert Trujillo. Afterward, Hetfield begged Newsted to stay for another song, and he and the band played “Damage Inc.”
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays the lead role, recently explained he based much of his character’s performance on late Metallica bass player Cliff Burton, who died when Metallica’s tour bus crashed during a tour in Sweden in 1986. Gordon-Levitt was shocked when Metallica recognized the similarities without giving them prior warning.