Rock author and historian Martin Popoff has weighed in on Metallica’s current era. He praised the band’s talent while pointing out a songwriting habit he believes has started to frustrate fans, as shared on Booked On Rock.
Popoff, who wrote “Metallica: Album by Album,” first addressed the band’s standing in the thrash metal genre. He then turned to what he calls their “Iron Maiden syndrome” — a tendency toward songs that run too long.
“Now at this point, they’re a pretty pure thrash band again,” Martin Popoff said. “In this genre, they are just proving that they are the most talented people in it – and the greatest riff writers. Dave Mustaine is pretty damn good with the riffs, too. Those later Megadeth albums are also really, really top-shelf thrash albums.”
Popoff then elaborated on how Metallica’s songwriting approach differs from Iron Maiden’s. He explained why it can wear on listeners despite its ambition.
“But I think what they’re proving… Y’know, they are annoying people a little bit with that whole ‘Iron Maiden syndrome’ of the songs being too long,” he continued. “But whereas Iron Maiden can be quite repetitive and quite rudimentary – production values, riffs, everything – within those long songs, Metallica is giving you a lot of fresh, interesting ideas. But almost too many per song, and that annoys the fans somewhat.”
This tendency toward dense, sprawling songwriting is nothing new for Metallica. It traces back to the band’s earliest work, well before the “Black Album” era Popoff references.
“Ride the Lightning,” Metallica’s second studio album, is a prime early example of the band’s ambitious, multi-part song structures. The eight-track record runs roughly 47 minutes, closing with “The Call of Ktulu,” an eight-minute-and-52-second instrumental epic built around shifting sections and layered arrangements. Even in 1984, Metallica was already packing more ideas into a single track than most of their thrash contemporaries attempted.
That pattern of cramming multiple musical ideas into extended song lengths has followed the band through every era since. It feeds directly into the very criticism Popoff raises about the group testing listeners’ patience with sheer density rather than repetition.
Popoff’s own book underscores just how much material there is to unpack across Metallica’s catalog. “Metallica: Album by Album” is structured as a track-by-track, record-by-record discussion covering all 11 of the band’s studio albums. It draws on insights from an all-star roster of heavy metal musicians and journalists.
That format gives Popoff and his contributors room to trace exactly how Metallica’s songwriting evolved from the tight, riff-driven thrash of their early years into the sprawling, idea-packed compositions that now define what he describes as their “Iron Maiden syndrome.”
