I should be reading Carl Schmitt right now, but I’ve decided to take a break and post my substantial blog entry.

For those who don’t know, Metallica will be releasing its newest album this summer, on June 10th. A review of the album, titled St. Anger, has been circulating, and can be found here. I for one hope sincerely hope that the review is real, and not just a hoax or an attempt to boost sales. Its basic message is that the new album will be raw and progressive, a far cry from some of the more pop-oriented and unoriginal material the band has been putting out since the Black Album. It gives hope to all of those that think Metallica has “sold out” in recent years. Maybe one can finally see them in concert and not cringe when the group plays its newest material.

When it comes to judging a band in this way, making the claim that a group has “sold out” or not, one has to deal with a lot more questions than may be originally apparent. After all, any band worth its salt must evolve its sound in some way; otherwise, rather than degenerate into a pop act derivative of the drivel currently polluting the air-waves, it will degenerate into a lame—and poor—imitation of its previous self.

But what constitutes “legitimate” evolution? With a band, that question is fairly easy to answer. Current Metallica—a Metallica that will hopefully be put to sleep with the release of St. Anger—differs from its older instantiation in that the band’s music shows an increasing lack of complexity and ingenuity, seemingly for the sake of creating a product more palatable to the general public. Hence, we see songs like The Unforgiven II, which fails miserably when compared to The Unforgiven, and I Disappear, off the soundtrack to Mission: Impossible 2. Metallica has lost a passion and energy that had originally put them at the forefront of metal. That said, they are still much better than most of the other rock music being presented lately, especially what has come to be called “new metal,” a whiny and bland musical style characterized by weak musical arrangements which sound alike, singers that sound alike, and lyrics built around an infantile lack of positive and manly assertiveness. If you have any doubts, think back to the riots that plagued the most recent Woodstock festival, where hordes of cry-baby Abercrombie & Fitch wearing pansies burned and looted the festival grounds because they had tummy aches. Now compare that to Metallica’s early days, where band members had to endure such extreme poverty they were often forced to feast on bologna-on-hand (literally a slice of bologna on one’s hand, which is what one does when one is too poor to afford bread) while channeling that frustration into a conquer-the-world mentality—the fuel for the musical revolution they ushered in.

This reminded me of a conversation I recently had with a friend of mine. What constitutes “legitimate” evolution when one is talking about a state? To phrase the issue in more concrete terms, can America ever become un-American?

The long discussion of Metallica should shed some light on the issue. The moral of the story is that institutions have essences, and that sometimes an institution can evolve in such a way as to contradict said essence. Of course, difficulties arise when attempting to discover the essence of a given polity. Not only does a polity transcend any single generation of men, but its constantly shifting position on the sliding scale of time necessitates change, often of a drastic kind, to ensure its survival. Though it is cliché to say it, politics is the art of the possible, and the world of possibility poses major problems for anyone with a politically traditionalist bent. It is a fine line that lies between a respect for tradition and an unfounded romanticism, a line I have often pole-vaulted over.

Such considerations must wait for another time. Mr. Schmitt sternly calls my name. Even world-conquerors are bound by their studies in youth.