When the first lyrics you hear on an album go like "I would cut my legs and tits off when I think of Boris Karloff in the dark of the moon", to the quaint strumming of an acoustic guitar it's fair to say that a listener would have no idea what path the music is about to take on. Then, when you consider that the voice behind the lyrics is that of Lou Reed and the music, when it kicks in (oh, and how it does) belongs to Metallica, you would be forgiven for thinking that you accidentally put on two records at the same time.
Reed and Metallica are very strange bedfellows. Reed's now familiar drawl, almost spoken word, mixes clumsily with James Hetfield's now well-worn trademark anguished vocals. The contrast between the two is too harsh to seem like any sort of natural collaboration that had any more thought behind it than a booze-fuelled conversation in a pub, "you know what would be cool? We should make a record together". No, no they shouldn't have.
This is a vanity project, nothing more. At no point during this record is anything presented to the listener that is digestible, let alone good. The sum of these parts is clearly better than anything they've done on Lulu. We're talking about the guy who wrote Venus in Furs and a band who've written some of the greatest rock songs of the last twenty-five years. Every second of Lulu, unfortunately, casts a black mark on all of this. Avoid.
