Good news! There’s a new Metallica song out!

This is good news for three key reasons. First, obviously, it’s a new Metallica song! There are never enough, so more are always welcome. Second, it means a new Metallica album is coming! It will have 11 additional Metallica songs on it! Thats—and you can trust me, I’m a data analyst—1,100 percent better than one new song.

At the moment, though, it’s the third benefit that concerns us: I get to write another column about Metallica songs.

When I heard “Lux Æterna” for the first time I was struck by a couple thoughts, most of which I’ll save until its entry in this column. But the relevant one right now is that it sounded to me like the best first single the band has had in quite a while. I liked most of them, don’t get me wrong, and they grew on me over time, but I wasn’t immediately won over.

That said, Metallica isn’t exactly coming out with two albums per year over here, so to check my theory, let’s go through the last five first singles so I can listen to them and talk about them.

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Metallica — “Lux Æterna”

Like I said, I thoroughly enjoy this song. I do not love that it forced me to figure out how to type the character “Æ,” but it’s a small price to pay. (On a Mac you hold Shift-A, wait a few seconds, then press 5.)

They’re clearly going for a Kill ‘Em All vibe on this one and, in a general sense, are doing a great job. Kirk can still shred, Het’s voice is marginally better than it was 40 years ago, and, as my colleague Tony Hicks put it on Facebook (where us olds talk about life), Lars must have taken up yoga or something.

What I enjoy, though, is that it’s the same vibe but with four decades of experience behind it. There’s a refinement that the old stuff they’re mimicking lacks. That’s good for an old man like me who appreciates complexity, but that also means it’s lacking the rawness that made the original so impactful and memorable.

Regardless, I dig it. On a scale of 1 to 10, where Lulu is 1 to “One” is ironically 10, I’ll give it a 7.

Metallica — “Hardwired”

Hardwired… to Self-Destruct came out in November of 2016, so the chorus, “We’re so fucked/ Shit out of luck,” really struck a chord. That was my main takeaway at the time. Otherwise, the song is pretty good.

It’s good, don’t get me wrong. It’s a good song that’s better than most other songs. But in the overall oeuvre of the Metallica canon, it’s not spectacular. I like it, and I enjoy it when I listen to it, but it’s not one I actively seek out.

I actually prefer the second single, “Moth Into Flame”—especially the live version, which is a recurring theme in the band’s recent albums. They take on an entirely different tone in person.

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Metallica — “The Day That Never Comes”

I have no idea what they were thinking with the singles from Death Magnetic.

“The Day That Never Comes” is fine but I’m not sure I’d have made it a single at all. The second single, “All Nightmare Long,” has an awesome video but is a decent-yet-unspectacular song. The third single, “Broken, Beat & Scarred,” is also fine. They’re replacement-level songs, album deep cuts.

Now if there weren’t any single-quality songs, that would be fine. But “Cyanide” is right there. It’s such a good song! It’s the best song on the album and would be a killer initial single to get people hyped up for the rest. And it’s not like the band doesn’t realize it. It’s a concert staple and usually gets played fairly early in the set.

All the respect to Rick Rubin but, dude.

Metallica — “St. Anger”

Ugh.

St. Anger, the album, is famously terrible. During Metallica’s 40th anniversary show, where they went through every album, Hetfield referred to it as “everyone’s favorite” with a chuckle. It’s so bad.

The worst part is that this came out in 2003. I had a cable modem, because I was fancy, but it was by modern standards cripplingly slow. There was no legal way to download music, and if there was, Lars wouldn’t have let Metallica be on it because of his grudge against Napster. So it premiered on the radio, which means I had to go sit in my car at the appointed time.

Imagine my reaction as I, excited, go out to my car to hear a new song by my favorite band, turn it on, and hear… “St. Anger.” I tried to convince myself it wasn’t terrible, that maybe it would get better the more I heard it, that maybe they didn’t do that to the drums for the whole album.

With the clarity of hindsight and nearly 20 years to listen and re-evaluate, it was even worse than I thought.

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Metallica — “The Memory Remains”

This is before my time. As I’ve said on multiple occasions in this column, I heard Reload a couple months after it came out at a friend’s birthday party when I was in high school and was immediately hooked, then a friend gave me a tape of Master of Puppets and I was really hooked. So I had no reaction when it came out.

That said… come on. It’s “The Memory Remains.” It was a pretty huge shift from what they’d done in the past but it’s still a classic song. Then Metallica released “The Unforgiven II” and “Fuel” and… yeah, great album, I don’t care what you say. Different isn’t bad, bands evolve, talent transcends subgenre.

What I’m saying is second-best initial single since 1997 is very impressive. Here’s hoping the rest of the album follows suit.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.