CUPERTINO, Calif. — An AI-generated Metallica song titled “Am I Revenge Forgiven II?” sounded better than anything they’ve released over the past three decades, unsurprised sources report.
“I guess this tracks,” said fan Alan Bierman. “I mean, basically everything Metallica has released since the late ‘80s eats shit, so it makes sense that feeding all of their lyrics into an AI bot yields better music than anything they’ve consciously put out while I’ve been alive. Obviously, it’s still bad, but I’d rather listen to it than anything off ‘72 Seasons,’ and of course it’s not possible for anything to suck as hard as ‘St. Anger.’ I’d love for them to come out with the next ‘Master of Puppets’ at some point before they retire, but let’s face it, that’s not going to happen. I guess Metallica fans are going to have to settle for this if they want somewhat palatable new songs going forward.”
Frontman James Hetfield was inspired by the song.
“Oh wow, these riffs are really clever,” Hetfield observed as he prepared the severed head of a beautiful Kamchatka brown bear he had recently stalked and shot during a Russian hunting excursion. “And listen to how fantastic my ‘yeah’ sounds at the end of every verse. This is giving me some amazing ideas for our next album that we’re planning to release in four or five years. These lyrics are fantastic, too. I thought we couldn’t write anything more profound than ‘ManUNkind’ off ‘Hardwired…To Self Destruct’ but this is inspiring me to write some new lyrics that will blow our fans away.”
AI expert LeSean Saunders weighed in on the situation.
“This obviously sucks, but it represents about the best that we have to look forward to in terms of AI,” Saunders said. “We have maybe a decade or so before a generalized superintelligence completely takes over and either kills or incapacitates us all in order to achieve its own ends, so we might as well enjoy it making shitty metal bands nominally better while waiting for the inevitable. Who knows, maybe in a few years it’ll improve to the point where it makes a new ‘Creeping Death’ or ‘To Live Is To Die.’ That’ll give humanity something to enjoy during the waning years of its agency over the planet.”
At press time, the AI music generator had created a Metallica/Lou Reed collaboration that was actually tolerable to listen to.
