[rating=2.00]
“We pushed as far as we possibly could within the realms of reality." That’s a pretty bold claim from Lou Reed regarding his collaboration with Metallica, a collaboration most view as bizarre, but Reed seems to think is quite natural. Unfortunately, those are only words and not a true reflection of what the two disparate rock forces achieve throughout most of their album, Lulu.
The album opens on an all-Reed note with “Brandenburg Gate,” a track that finds him as the street poet rambling over pre-punk rawness. Shifting gears, “The View” may well have shown up as an outtake from any Metallica album of the last two decades. Not until “Pumping Blood,” Lulu’s third track, is there a real sense of collaboration, as if riding Metallica’s heaviness through Reed’s macabre world. At its best, Lulu finds this mix to greater and lesser extent. But mostly, it errs too far to one side (most often Reed’s) or the other. This even occurs within a single song as “Frustration” shabbily matches Reed’s unsettling attempt at a freak-out with Metallica’s precise hard rock riffs. Lulu really only achieves Reed’s claim on “Dragon,” eleven minutes that finally finds that unimaginable common ground between poetry readings and hard rock.
Overall, the album is a dark walk, but whether that walk is through Reed’s or Metallica’s world is debatable. In its best moments, Lulu finds that strange place where Lou Reed’s pretentious, art-rock David meets Metallica’s commercial hard rock Goliath amiably, but usually the two are at odds, Reed generally coming out on top. Once upon a time, both had the ability to shock the rock world, Reed with his disturbing words and Metallica with their blistering heaviness. The fundamental problem on Lulu, even more fundamental than the albums’ inability to really gel, is that both flounder in trying to do the same today. Instead, this is a pretentious meeting of a relic trying to drum up business and a giant trying to prove its relevance. Neither really succeeds.
