I’m as big a Lou Reed fan as there is, but based on the video below (from the 2009 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame show), I’m not sure a Reed/Metallica collaboration is such a hot idea. I’m keeping fingers crossed that what appears to be a marriage made in hell may end up surprising me.

David Fricke of Rolling Stone magazine has heard the album and wrote:

The record, not yet titled, features 10 songs composed by Reed with significant arrangement contributions by the band that suggest a raging union of his 1973 noir classic, Berlin, and Metallica’s ‘86 crusher, Master of Puppets.

Fricke’s description confuses me. I’m even less clear as to what the album sounds like then I was before reading it.

And Metallica’s James Hetfield doesn’t help:

Lars and I listened to the stuff,” Hetfield says of Reed’s demos, “and it was like, ‘Wow, this is very different.’ It was scary at first, because the music was so open. But then I thought, ‘This could go anywhere.’ “

Knowing the songs were composed by Reed based on Frank Wedekind’s play Lulu, which was written in 1895, puts this into the category of Reed’s work I generally don’t like: the pretentious and forgettable concept album.

Lou Reed thinks the album is…

... maybe the best thing done by anyone, ever. It could create another planetary system. I’m not joking, and I’m not being egotistical.

We will soon find out on Halloween, the day the album is released.