Forgive me if I’m not 100 percent up to date on this bunch of Metallica waterboys, whose earliest mall-thrash efforts with melodic pretty-boy Joey Belladonna as their singer made it impossible to keep fronting their circled-A-for-anarchy who-the-hell-cares-ness with any real conviction, much less please their hilarious “death to pretty-boy-metal” fan base (all of whom probably nowadays listen to Rick James for nostalgia, I’m sure). It got even worse when Anthrax’ cardboard-short-person guitarist Scott Ian kept showing up on every VH1 ’80s-metal show, apparently as the spokesman for sloppy King Tut beards — I mean, you didn’t feel sorry for him? But anyway, this release, with a much more aggressive Belladonna in place, belays all that stuff. Yes, there’s a lot of too-smooth neo-metal ideology rented cheap from bands like Bury Your Dead, but that (utterly predictable) pandering is really the only disposable thing about this record. Much of it demonstrates a hunger to go beyond their current lot, where they co-headline million-band corporate-energy-gulp shows with Megadeth and such; they often seem to want to be old Queen or old Rush, anything but what they’ve been up ’til now. Can’t say I blame them, and can’t say this isn’t a really good album either. A —Eric W. Saeger