Metallica: Ranking Every Album's First Song
8. That Was Just Your Life - Death Magnetic
The opener to 2008's Death Magnetic starts off well enough. It's low, dark, and brooding, before it explodes into life with some classic Metallica-sounding guitars.
However, over the next seven or so minutes, the song just doesn't really go anywhere.
Coming off the back of the group's much-maligned eighth album St. Anger, Metallica needed something big to wash that sour taste out of fans' mouths.
Death Magnetic as a whole certainly did the job with tracks like "Cyanide", "All Nightmare Long", and "The Unforgiven III", but all of these would have been a better choice to open the record than "That Was Just Your Life".
The song is alright for what it is - a long, thumping thrash track that returns the bands to its roots - but it never quite breaks into anything above "alright". The lyrics are cliche thrash fare, as is the music, and the whole song is, sadly, forgettable.
It gets a pass because it did help set the tone for the band's return to form, but outside of that very specific context, "That Was Just Your Life" is as dismissable as its title suggests.