Lou Reed and Metallica, together on wax, set to drop November 1

​You may remember reports, from earlier this summer, that morose, smack-celebrating poet/musician Lou Reed and thrash-metal werewolves Metallica holed up in a studio and cut an album together. Like us, you probably nodded and navigated to another online article or devoted more attention to your lunch before blinking, wobbling your head, and clicking back to make sure you hadn't just hallucinated anything. Even after various new outlets verified that this was really happening, that it wasn't bullshit, Gimme Noise remained skeptical that this collusion of Lower East Side cool and headbanging amplitude wasn't all just an elaborate prank designed to rankle international taste-makers, mash-up librarians, and bored bloggers.

Turns out they weren't kidding, after all; you'll be able to buy this collaboration on November 1st.


The Product: Purportedly a hard-rock take on songs wrote for the Frank Wedekind play Lulu.



Odds That Reed Enjoyed The Surging Heaviosity of Master Of Puppets While Scoring Opium or, Alternately, Cavorting With Laurie Anderson or a Male Prostitute: 500 to 1

Odds That Lars Ulrich Can Sing All The Words To "Vicious," on Demand and In Key: 500,000 to 1

Odds That Sterling Morrison is Rolling Over In His Grave As I Type This: 5,000,000 to 1

Odds That Reed and Metallica Ordered Some Gourmet Delivery Chinese Take-Out While Recording: 50 to 1

Odds That The Delivery Guy Had Any Sense That He Was Playing A Minor Yet Important Part In The Making of Rock History: 5,000 to 1

Odds That Reed Will Upbraid At Least Three Interviewers During The Promotional Cycle for This Record: 10 to 1



Nothing's Shocking: Collaboration is kind of the muso retirer's default mode, what a rock god does when there's not much left to prove to the audience or to the mirror, when relevancy is an afterthought. (Cf. Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson, and The SuperHeavy, though that one's a bit of a stretch.) Aside from a new-age instrumental album, Reed hasn't done much new and exciting in recent years. Metallica? Well, Metallica toured some, were in a documentary about therapy, spent a lot of time hating on Napster, and made records nobody got excited about.



Side Note: Despite having outgrown massive, wall-sized rock posters over a decade ago, Gimme Noise would trade a lung for a billowing silkscreen of this image (or a tattoo), which is obviously authentic but remains subtly suggestive of photographic doctoring, probably because I still can't quite wrap my head around the sheer surreality of this team-up.



Question: If this project sticks around, and they tour together, how will the group be introduced? Will it be "Ladies and gentlemen, Lou Reed and Metallica"? Or "Ladies and gentlemen, loureedmetallica"? Or perhaps even "Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to die"? I can foresee lawyer-involved arguments about whether it should be "metallicaloureedlulu"; this could get sticky.



Group Experiment: I don't have any idea what this take on Lulu will sound like, and neither do you. But in the spirit of danger, sonic adventurism, and good clean Internet fun, Gimme Noise encourages you to activate all of the YouTube videos embedded here simultaneously, record the clustered, conflicting sounds that result, and post the results to Mediafire as "loureedmetallicalulu" or more baffling "loureedmetallicahulu." You know, just for kicks, and to give some old dudes brave enough to try something out of the ordinary a fighting chance.



Odds That All Personnel Laid Down Parts While Wearing Black Leather; Odds That Pet Dogs Roamed The Studio During Recording; Odds That Reed and Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo Envied The Exquisite Curliness Of The Other's Locks At Least Once During Recording: About even in every case

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