A few days ago, I got my hands on a pre-release copy of Metallica’s latest album, “Death Magnetic.”

Now, I was once a pretty hardcore Metallica fan; in my youth preferring the “Master of Puppets”-era sound, my taste eventually maturing to find the “Load” sound to be preferable. After that live album they recorded with the SF symphony and Michael Kamen, as well as the all-covers album, I was really excited to hear a new studio album, because the songwriting on the new songs from the symphony show was really fantastic — and the band had never sounded better on the covers album.

Sadly they kind of lost me with the eventual release of “St. Anger.” After a considerable amount of time, I did come to find a couple of the songs on that album tolerable, but my overall disappointment in them not sounding like I expected was kind of a downer.

It was with that disappointment in mind that I hesitantly decided to give “Death Magnetic” listen. I’m really glad I did, because over the last couple days I’ve found the album to be really fantastic. Nobody is more surprised than me at that fact. Many of the songs have really catchy grooves and riffs, really earworming themselves into my head.

I’ve picked my three favorite of the songs from the album and popped them into my Opentape installation (which I’ve been adding features to) for your listening pleasure. It’s with hope that other disheartened fans — and perhaps some newcomers as well — might give the album the fair chance it really deserves.

Oh, and please don’t go linking to this. I just want to share some great music with my friends and promote the album — not get sued by Metallica :) If you like what you hear, the album comes out on Sept. 12th.