Musically, Death Magnetic is a radical departure from Metallica's previous album, St. Anger (2003), which featured simple instrumentation, downtuned guitars, stripped-down production, and an absence of guitar solos. This album, on the other hand, features more complex musical compositions and long, technical guitar solos from both Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield, and standard guitar tuning in most songs, marking a return to the band's thrash metal roots. The album received mostly positive reviews upon release, with critics describing it as a return to the musical style of their early albums. Despite its praise, there was much criticism aimed at the album's production, which featured an overly compressed dynamic range that caused some songs to feature poor sound quality.
Death Magnetic was the band's first album released through Warner Bros., although they still remain with Warner Music Group, which also owns their previous label, Elektra Records. Outside of North America, they are distributed through Universal Music Group as they remain signed to Vertigo Records in the UK. The album was also Metallica's fifth consecutive studio album to debut at number 1 on the US Billboard 200, making them the first band ever to do so. In support of the album, Metallica commenced on the World Magnetic Tour from 2008 until 2010. All of Death Magnetic was made available as downloadable content in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.
Early in 2004, lead singer James Hetfield revealed that Metallica had been playing new material during studio sessions, but that there was no mention of plans for a ninth studio album at that time. Select music from the jam sessions may be used on the album, as Lars Ulrich stated, "I definitely look forward to sifting through some of that stuff when we get back to the studio in January." On that note, by October 2004, the band had already compiled nearly 50 hours of pre-set jamming, with hundreds of riffs, chord progressions and bass lines. On September 30, 2004, Launch Radio revealed from an interview with Hetfield that the band hoped to return to the studio in spring of 2005 to begin recording their ninth studio album for Warner Bros. Records.
On March 10, 2006, it was reported that Metallica was planning to use the following six months to write material for the album, in addition to the previous two months they had already been spending writing music. Ulrich also stated that the band was getting along much better in the studio than they did during the recording of St. Anger. On April 6, he revealed that the band had composed "six to seven" songs (except for vocals) from their findings off the riff tapes recording during pre-sets of the Madly in Anger with the World Tour. He also said that by this point, the band's new material was reminiscent of "old school" Metallica works, and that it certainly did not feel like a St. Anger "part two".
On May 20, 2006, Kirk Hammett revealed that the band had fifteen songs written and were writing on average two to three songs per week. Hetfield also praised producer Rick Rubin for his production style in giving the band their own freedom and keeping the pressure at a minimum, despite the sessions becoming sometimes briefly unfocused. On May 27, Metallica updated their website with a video featuring information regarding the album.
Three studios were used to produce the album, those being Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California, Shangri La Studios in Malibu, California, and HQ in San Rafael, California. On January 1, 2007, Ulrich stated in an interview with Revolver that the band would be conceiving the album much like they did their albums prior to working with ex-producer Bob Rock; they would sit down, write a select number of songs, then enter the studio to record them. He also quoted Rubin by saying "Rubin didn't want them to start the recording process until every song that they were going to record was as close to 100 percent as possible."
On March 5, Ulrich revealed that the band had narrowed a potential 25 songs down to fourteen, and that they would begin recording those fourteen on the following week. He also expanded on Rubin's style of production, saying,
Rick's big thing is to kind of have all these songs completely embedded in our bodies and basically next Monday, on D-Day, just go in and execute them. So you leave the creative element of the process out of the recording, so you go in and basically just record a bunch of songs that you know inside out and upside down, and you don't have to spend too much of your energy in the recording studio creating and thinking and analyzing and doing all that stuff. His whole analogy is, the recording process becomes more like a gig — just going in and playing and leaving all the thinking at the door.
On March 14, the band's official website issued a statement: "Metallica left the comfort of HQ this week to descend upon the greater Los Angeles area to begin recording their ninth original album. This is the first time they've recorded outside of the Bay Area since they spent time at One-on-One Studios recording their self-titled album in 1990 and '91." This was confirmed on July 24, 2008 on Mission: Metallica, as a video surfaced showing the crew moving into Sound City Studios of Nirvana fame.
On June 4, Robert Trujillo revealed that only select portions of the two new songs debuted in Berlin and Tokyo respectively would be featured on the album. The band hoped to have the album finished by October or November, when the album would be mixed. He predicted the album would be out in February 2008, and revealed that the songs they were working with were quite long.
On February 2, 2008, Sterlingsound.com revealed that Ted Jensen from Sterling Sound Studios would be mastering the new record. According to Blabbermouth.net and other sources, Greg Fidelman, who had served as a sound engineer, had also been tapped to mix the album.
Ulrich confirmed on May 15, 2008 that Metallica recorded eleven songs for Death Magnetic, although only ten would appear on the album due to the constraints of the physical medium. The eleventh song, titled "Shine" (which was later retitled "Just a Bullet Away"), was a song Hetfield "based around a Layne Staley type, a rock & roll martyr magnetized by death."
Kirk Hammett played a role in inspiring the album title by bringing a photograph of deceased Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley to the studio where Metallica was recording. "That picture was there for a long time", said Hammett, "I think it pervaded James' psyche." Wondering why someone with Staley's talent would choose to use drugs so heavily and die so young, Hetfield started writing a song based on his questions (the song "Rebel of Babylon").
On July 16, 2008, Hetfield commented on the album's title:
Death Magnetic, at least the title, to me started out as kind of a tribute to people that have fallen in our business, like Layne Staley and a lot of the people that have died, basically — rock and roll martyrs of sorts. And then it kind of grew from there, thinking about death… some people are drawn towards it, and just like a magnet, and other people are afraid of it and push. Also the concept that we're all gonna die sometimes is over-talked about and then a lot of times never talked about — no one wants to bring it up; it's the big white elephant in the living room. But we all have to deal with it at some point.
The title is referenced in the track "My Apocalypse". According to Hammett, another title considered for the album was Songs of Suicide and Forgiveness. Death Magnetic was eventually picked out of four working titles when Hetfield met with creative agency Turner Duckworth, who were brought to deal with the album's visual identity, and as he discussed the songs "it was clear that they were all linked to death, facing up to the nature of death, and the fear and attraction that surrounds death."
A collector's edition white coffin-shaped box which includes the deluxe edition of Death Magnetic, along with additional "making of" footage not on the bonus DVD, an exclusive T-shirt with the Death Magnetic logo, a flag, guitar picks, a backstage pass, a fold-out coffin-shaped poster with the members of Metallica and a collector's credit card with a code for a free download of a performance in Europe in September. This set was limited to 2,000 copies.
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