72 Seasons, the band’s 11th album, shares Hardwired’s comfort in the vastness of the back catalogue. It isn’t running hastily toward or away from some earlier milestone. It’s just hosting a conversation about the illusion of memory and the influence the past (and our perception of it) exerts on the present. It slips easily between the fleet, muscular, punk-inspired jams the band learned as friends and admirers of Lemmy Kilmister; the lumbering timing, suspenseful start-stop dynamics, and punishing riff architecture of “Enter Sandman” and “Sad But True”; and the bluesy swagger of the late-’90s Metallica records that let their expansive musical roots show.
