Public's Reception

"It might have sounded good on paper. ... But someone should have crumpled up that paper and thrown it away. "

Don Kaye, RoadRunner Records November 3, 2011.


I can't overstate how bad Lou Reed's vocals are. It sounds as if a homeless crackhead has broken into the studio and is holding the producer at knifepoint, demanding that his delusion of a masterful artistic vision be captured and applied to some third-rate rejected demo tracks by a former metal band that has given up the ghost. The lazy, unimaginative lyrics, mostly Freudian musings on feelings of sexual inadequacy, are as compelling as the dialogue of a prime time soap opera. Lou Reed might use coarse language, but the same mundane insecurities are being complained about.

Grabbag. October 16, 2013. Encyclopedia Metallum

The point of no return is when Lou Reed first opens his mouth, spouting about cutting off tits when thinking of Boris Karloff on the dark of the moon and AAAAAHHHH. It's the least pleasing noise to ever grace my ears this side of an Alex Jones radio broadcast, and he never shuts up. Let me repeat that for you. He. Never. Shuts. Up. You know the archetype of the crazy rambling homeless guy who just goes on and on and on about things nobody would ever in a thousand lifetimes care about ad nauseum? That's Lou Reed on this album. Combine his nonsensical, possibly drunken spoken word with incomprehensible lyrics about dog prostitutes and being dry and spermless like a girl (Huh?) and cheating on yourself (once again, HUH?) and oh my god, just shut the FUCK up, Lou Reed! The Metallica side of things is no less ridiculous in its badness, with the band lazily playing along not sounding as if they give a single solitary crap in the world about what they are doing.

Subrick. October 16, 2013. Encyclopedia Metallum

Lulu is confounding, and for none of the reasons Reed and co. have been priding themselves on — watching their 13-minute press video, I keep expecting Reed to take off a mask and reveal that he’s Andy Kaufman. I could try to engage Lulu from the perspective of the musicians involved, detailing the tension between providing fulfilment for a stagnant fanbase and well-established musicians doing whatever the fuck they want, but even that would be giving Lulu too much credit. Just about everything on Lulu is so obviously terrible, so turgid and utterly baffling that I can’t help but think it’s all an elaborate joke. Reed’s Metal Machine Music contains more ideas, and doesn’t begin with the embarrassingly juvenile lyric “I would cut my legs and tits off.”

Look, I get it. Sometimes bands get bored. If they’re concerned with maintaining artistic relevancy, they might branch out and produce an interesting new direction of work. Lulu is interesting, but only as an object of derision — between Reed’s self-consciously spooky, inebriated grandpa delivery on “Pumping Blood,” James Hetfield’s hilarious “I am the table” tantrum on “The View,” the pointless 20-minute drone of “Junior Dad,” or the just frankly uncomfortable merger of half-baked sludge riffs with overlong track lengths (perhaps present so that Lars Ulrich can pound out just one more drum fill, or so Reed can awkwardly stammer out another lyrical nadir like “I swallow your sharpest curdle like a coloured man’s dick”), I’m amazed that nobody involved woke up and realized this high-profile concept album was an hour and a half of half-written ideas with neanderthalic execution (something about German Expressionism; you’d be better off rewatching The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari while running barefoot on a treadmill tracked with sandpaper).

Devid Friessen, Fast Forward Weekly November 5, 2011.

Ultimately the reason I like this album is that it’s sincere, and that’s a quality I don’t feel enough of anymore. We’ve American Idol’d and Pitchfork’d away anything that isn’t cool, and even if you’re not a fan of either of those tastemakers, I dare you to take a long hard look at the shape of your current tastes and see if their fingers haven’t reached some part of you. This album is desperately uncool, everyone involved is over-the-hill and irrelevant. There’s no synths, most of these tracks sound like outtakes from ...And Justice For All-era jams (some in the best possible way) and…did I mention these songs were long? Wow, so effing long…

But I really do like it. Lou Reed’s somehow still plumbing his brain stem for the most perverse psycho-sexual rants this side of Coil in this case from lyrics to an abandoned theatre project. Metallica really get some choice riffage in, some of their best ensemble playing in years. The production by Hal Willner is lush and impeccable, replete with wonderfully strange string arrangements and drones, never wanting for less of this or more of that.

Invisible Oranges November 2, 2011.

Reed has always had a pretty dirty mouth, no denying that. But now that he's pushing 70, it's extra disturbing to hear him sing lines like these, from 'Dragon': "The hair on your shoulders/The smell of your armpit/The taste of your vulva and everything on it." Call us prude, but we're just not into hearing old Lou talk about cunnilingus.

Then there's this, from 'Pumping Blood': "Blood in the foyer/The bathroom/The tea room/The kitchen, with her knives splayed/I will swallow your sharpest cutter/Like a colored man's d---." Gore mixed with some racist lingo? No thanks.

Lou Reed and Metallica's 'Lulu' Letdowns and Head-Scratchers -- Count Five, Spinner November 2, 2011.

Lulu is so bad that I can’t believe it’s real. It fascinates me that something this bad actually exists. If I went to my local Best Buy and plunked down the $9.99 or whatever it is they’re asking for it, I could hold this piece of shit in my hand. It isn’t a nightmare, a bullshit rumor, or an April Fool’s prank. It actually exists.
Josh Haun, That's How Kid's Die November 2, 2011.

For the most part, Lulu is barely listenable. Leading up to “Junior Dad” are nine tracks—two of them topping 11 minutes—that feature Reed bleating like a dementia-stricken uncle over his nephews’ numbskull garage band. “The View” is the worst: Reciting what sound like leftover lyrics from 1989’s “There Is No Time,” Reed vomits empty, monochromatic angst over one of the most thread-stripped riffs Metallica has ever peddled—and when frontman James Hetfield pops a vein to growl the chorus, the whole mess collapses. The opener, “Brandenburg Gate,” manages to mash Reed and Metallica into something marginally empathetic, but mostly, the gears just grind. “As long as you could raise that little doggie face / to a cold-hearted pussy / you could have a taste,” Reed slurs in “Little Dog.” Frantically ignoring the crazy crap Uncle Lou is mumbling, Metallica tries to mask the musk of flop-sweat with a blanket of guitar feedback nowhere near as heavy as Reed himself once mustered.
Jason Heller, AVClub.com November 1, 2011.

It’s been clear that Lulu will live and die in the comments section, and already the prevalent narrative is that the album isn’t just a bomb, but a nuclear bomb. It’s Qwikster, Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign, Bucky Larson, and the Boston Red Sox all rolled into one. Fans of both artists may be bracing for the worst, but there is a strange bloodsport to their cringes and comments: We relish the possibility of a rare faceplant and desire an album so empirically heinous that everyone agrees on its failure. We want an event.

Now that Lulu is finally out in stores, however, the truth is much more complicated and much less fun. The album isn’t as colossally bad as we were led to believe or even might have hoped. Don’t misread: It’s not an especially good album, but its failures are noble rather than ignoble—byproducts of ambition rather than hubris. In a weird way, that makes its flaws more sympathetic and turns it into something of a grower, as Reed’s lyrics become seemingly more sensical and Metallica’s thrashing more thunderous with each listen.
Stephen M. Deusner, Paste Magazine. November 1, 2011.


For all the hilarity that ought to ensue here, Lulu is a frustratingly noble failure. Audacious to the extreme, but exhaustingly tedious as a result, its few interesting ideas are stretched out beyond the point of utility and pounded into submission-- the average song length clocks in at eight excruciating minutes. Still, it's kind of fascinating to hear two veteran entities trying like hell to excavate common ground that simply does not exist. ...

For most of the record, Lou Reed and Metallica barely sound like they're on the same planet, let alone in the same room; the album works neither as powerful rock music nor as an impressionistic soundtrack to a spoken narrative. Reed's monotone remains unresponsive to what's happening around him whether the occasion calls for full-torque thrash ("Mistress Dread") or dreary acoustic mood pieces ("Little Dog"), while Lars Ulrich's flailing fills during the breakdowns on "Pumping Blood" and "Frustration" are essentially drummerese for "what the fuck do I do with this?"

Stuart Berman, Pitchfork November 1, 2011.

Lou Reed's demonstrated inability to carry tunes as he used to so ably forms the critical crux of "Lulu." As such, Reed rhythmically talks in a flat monotone over the directionless, ambling music of Metallica. The whole affect is like if Henry Rollins was stricken with a dripping, liquid, debilitating flu and decided to read Ginsberg poetry to a finger-snapping group of pseudo-intellectuals who had gathered out of irony at a Metallica practice. The only thing that really separates Reed's rambling from the insane delusions of a metropolitan derelict is the legitimacy of his legacy. And the fact that he can get Metallica.
M. Drew, BloodyGoodHorror.com November 1, 2011.

Ironically, the most listenable parts of this entire sorry affair are the bits where Metallica shut up entirely and let Lou Reed just do what he does, the end of ‘Junior Dad’ being perhaps the best case in point – eight-plus minutes of hypnotically-cycling keyboard chords, not a peep from the Bay Area boys, and a curious sense of calm reflection. Also see the intro to ‘Cheat On Me’ – again, Reed left to his own devices resulting in a pretty affecting and genuinely decent piece of music.
Rob McAuslan, OneMetal.com November 1, 2011.

The art-song cycle – originally written for a Berlin theater production, declaimed from a female protagonist's POV – revels in dominatrix decadence and bodily fluids ("a bleeding strap across my back . . ."); 44 years after "Venus in Furs," the words won't shock anybody, though they try. Reed's reading is flat enough to get subsumed in the drone. He's still preferable to the Cookie Monster vomit that passes for vocals on many metal records – and he's still his own rock & roll animal.
Chuck Eddy, Rolling Stone. November 1, 2011.

It sounds like an improvisational affair, a project initiated on a whim while becoming a permanent artifact will be remembered as nothing more than a “What the fuck?!” moment. Generations will ponder it, and you may even find a few weirdoes in the corner that will defend this moment.

Ignore them. There’s nothing remotely redeeming here.

Lulu is something that may have indeed been something therapeutic for those involved, and it may even hold a special place in their heart. But that doesn’t mean it should have been offered a legitimate release date. It’s something that should have left to the vaults, a curio whose legend grows from its own silence.

Unfortunately, it’s here. It’s real. And it’s awful.

GloriousNoise.com November 1, 2011.

At 90 minutes in length, Lulu is no light snack. The overall effect of the album is one of claustrophobia, of an unsettling and relentless assault that is more artistic instillation than rock opera. These are the aspects of the album that will take time to bed-in, in order that the jarring nature of much of this work will acclimatise itself to the listener’s ear. But even allowing for this it seems clear that this collaboration adheres to a careful and deliberate design. Following the avalanche of oppression that precedes it, Lulu’s denouement comes in the form of the 19-minute "Junior Dad", a track with a groove of such gloriously hypnotic power that its effect is akin to being rescued after months trapped in a pothole.
Ian Winwood, BBC News October 31, 2011.

‘Cause the bottom line is this: if Lulu had been made by five dudes who weren’t already famous, no one would give two fucks about it. A reader would send us a YouTube rip of one of the songs, and we’d publish it and laugh at it, and so would everyone in the comments section, and then we would all forget about it — at least until one of the band members sent us a furious e-mail, at which point we’d remember it for the amount of time it took to read that e-mail, and then we’d forget about it again. Okay, so Lulu isn’t meant to be mainstream, and every now and then, Metallica seem to briefly stumble upon a not-unlistenable riff. Guess what? There’s as much pretentious awful modern experimental art as there is mainstream trite, and it’s Metallica’s job to write not-unlistenable riffs. Patting them on back for doing that which they are supposed to do anyway is, frankly, a waste of the energy it took you to raise your arm and make that patting motion.

What a lot of people don’t seem to get is that former Metallica fans who now hate the band don’t feel all this vitriol because the band’s sound has evolved — we feel all this vitriol because the band’s sound has evolved into something incredibly not-good. I have no idea what Loutallica’s intentions were when they recorded Lulu, but I know the final product isn’t worth the space it’s currently occupying on my hard drive.

- AR

Lulu is neither a hilarious train wreck (just a confusing one) nor a triumph. But I would rather hear four or five more Metallica albums like this before they finally pack it in than another Load, Reload, St. Anger, or what half of Death Magnetic was. The question is, what’s more admirable and daring: making almost an hour and a half’s worth of repetitive, muddled-but-unusual drek because you’ve made more than enough money and can afford to do what you want, or slapping an orchestra on your back catalog and moaning through your greatest hits? I’d emphatically argue the former.
- Sammy O'Hagar.
Lulu is indeed terrible, often laughable, and largely unlistenable. But it’s a fascinating kind of unlistenable, because it stems from Reed and Metallica’s failure at listening to each other. ...

The one wholly positive thing you can say about Lulu is that Reed and Metallica had no incentive to make this record, and they made it anyway. A sure sign of the purity of their vision, right? But it’s hard to describe the album as “uncompromising,” or hear this union as “effortless,” as the press materials do. Lulu could have used more compromise, more effort.

-- Satan Rosenbloom
The only song that I half enjoy is “Iced Honey,” because it’s the only one where they actually attempt to match Lou Reed’s style and make it a collaboration, rather than both parties stubbornly trying to hold on to their own sound. Until James comes in again. “Ooo, iced hon-EH!” indeed.
-- Leyla Ford
The only way I can explain what listening to this is like is… you know what, imagine yourself in a nursing home, and some other guest is playing some guitar riffs on their iPod speakers, or ghetto blaster, or whatever for some reason. After hearing this commence, your very sick, very troubled grandfather or uncle, or neighbor, or what-have-you, leaves his room to follow said root-of-noise to yell gibberish at it. Just, strings of words that don’t make sense, with random obscenities sprinkled in here and there, fairly regularly. In a nutshell, that’s Lulu. Alzheimer’s Metal.
-- Kellhammer.

LOUTALLICA’S LULU: THE METALSUCKS REVIEWS MetalSucks.net. October 31, 2011.

Lulu may be the ultimate Goth album: steeped in art-house self-regard, mired in the vilest extremes of perversion and misery, barked out with as little human warmth as its practitioners can muster and its leaden tortures drawn out to unbearable lengths, it takes the notion of being "drawn to the dark side" to the nth degree.
Andy Gill, The Independent October 28, 2011.

If these cagey tunesmiths had consciously tried to make a record this simultaneously dull and comedic, they'd never have succeeded; the closest artistic equivalent would be what might have happened if Vincent Gallo had been a script consultant for The Room. To be fair, the end of the album does have one song that's mildly OK — a dreamy, unaggressive, 20-minute exploration titled "Junior Dad" that will probably resonate with Damien Echols. There's also a track called "The View" that's pretty mind-expanding if you pretend the lyrics are literally about watching The View. But the rest of Lulu is as appalling as logic demands. If the Red Hot Chili Peppers acoustically covered the 12 worst Primus songs for Starbucks, it would still be (slightly) better than this. "Loutallica" makes SuperHeavy seem like Big Star. But this is what happens in a free society. Enjoy your freedom, slaves.
Chuck Klosterman, Grantland October 25, 2011.

Seriously, all they had to do was ask Lou, "hey, what's this song about and what kind of emotion do you want to put forth through the music?" Seriously, that's it. Oh, and they had to be able to play within those parameters. Instead, it sounds like all that they heard Lou say was "play something, anything, for 8 minutes, but make it one riff and stick with it." Again, this would have been tolerable, but Metallica being Metallica interpreted it as "play one riff for 8 minutes and start throwing in random ego stroking for no reason to throw off any sort of emotional story-telling foundation you may have been headed towards." Mission accomplished.

Seriously, there is absolutely no subtlety to what they are trying to do. Jeez, I actually have no idea what they are trying to do. And poor Lou Reed... All that he's trying to do is tell his little story, but Metallica are so busy ego-stroking all over everything that Mr. Reed feels compelled to start yelling over the music just to try to get his point across. It's embarrassing. Truly embarrassing. Usually I can get at least a chuckle out of hearing Lars trying to be tricky, but here it's just annoying. Listen to the track "Pumping Blood'" and tell me what the fuck he thinks he's doing, because it sure as shit sounds like a simpleton who thinks he's a genius.

Ichabod Crane. February 11, 2012. Encyclopedia Metallum

For all the terrible things going on during the first half of this disaster, however, the true ugliness of this incipient misconception rears its head in the second. All that can be said about this outlandish niche that has been established is that the longer it goes, the worse it gets. Between the excruciating repetition of "Dragon" and the stagnated ambiance that dominated that latter half of the near 20 minute crap-shoot "Junior Dad", this album just can't seem to cope with the idea that someone is actually supposed to be deriving enjoyment from listening to it. While the first half of this album seems uninterested in the emotional state of its audience, the remaining half is consciously trying to affect it in the most negative way possible.

Hell's Unicorn. November 4th, 2011. Encyclopedia Metallum

But for all the mind-numbing droning overlong arrangements and the acceptable-at-best production values, Lulu dies nine hundred of its thousand deaths at the hands of Lou’s alleged poetry. In all of human history, no stick-thin, Patti Smith-worshiping, black-haired and broken-hearted teenager with too many Dylan records and Bukowski books and Fellini films has ever written poetry this terrible. Perhaps these lyrics make more sense given some familiarity with the plays – one would hope so, and I concede that I have not read or seen the Lulu plays – but there’s nothing in Lou’s lyrics that makes me want to change that, that gives any sense of coherent narrative or character development or exposition. It’s all just crazy-homeless-person shouting and muttering, an unending litany of unexplained and unlinked disturbing phrases. Hearing Lou intone “spermless… like a girl…” will haunt me forever. And of course, he says it about thirty times, but at least James has the good sense not to repeat that line – thank God for the little things. Further Lou-musings about being a dog prostitute, about lifting “that little doggie face to a cold-hearted pussy” to “taste what the big dog got,” about cutting off “[his] tits and arms” will provide hours of quotable fun and the potential for endless parodying, and honestly, that’s about the best thing that can come of Lulu. These lines can replace “my lifestyle determines my deathstyle” as the go-to quote for the sound of a once-great metal band disappearing up its own ass.

As it collapses into dust beneath the weight of its own pretentious bullshit, unsupported by anything remotely approaching a decent song, Lulu is a thousand times the disaster that St. Anger was. Lulu is, if not the worst album in the history of metal, easily within the top five. It’s a failure of proportions so epic that it’s almost unfathomable. ...

Jordan Campbell, Metal Review October 22, 2011.