Here it is at last, Loutallica: The Album.

Lou Reed and Metallica have jumped the gun on their Nov. 1 release date by making the album available on their website. Here now, are my impressions …

I’m not even sure how to start reviewing this record. How about the fact that this is bound to replace St. Anger as the most despised metal album of all time. Lulu is difficult to listen to. If you look up the word “disconcerting” in the dictionary, you’ll find this album.

It’s hard even to approach the album as your preconceived notions of Lou Reed and Metallica take over. The first single, “The View,” does not help matters as it comes off as Lou Reed droning over Metallica’s familiar thumping.

The best way to approach Lulu is to see it for what Loutallica was going for, a sort of conceptual theater piece with Lou serving as the narrator of a story about a girl named Lulu and Metallica providing the soundtrack. Lou handles virtually all the vocals. James Hetfield’s vocal contributions are limited basically to shouting the harmony lines. If you approach it that way, you at least can get past the weirdness of Loutallica’s very existence.

With that in mind, Lulu is a noble failure. It’s not good, but it’s not the hideous disaster that people hearing “The View” for the first time might think. In fact, there are some moments that reveal how good a Lou Reed-Metallica collaboration could have been. The opening “Brandenburg Gate” starts with Lou’s plaintive singing over an acoustic guitar before Metallica comes in. “Iced Honey” is the best track on the album, as Lou’s singing is  complimented well by Metallica’s Load-era style blues rock riffs.

What ultimately sinks the album is what made people hate “The View,” which is Lou Reed’s droning lyrics. I don’t know if he envisioned Lulu as a spoken word piece with Metallica playing over it, or if it’s just the ravages of time and age, but there’s no way around the fact that he sounds horrible on tracks like “The View” and “Pumping Blood.”

I’m not a huge Lou Reed fan, but I spent a good portion of my college years loving Lou’s Rock ‘N Roll Animal, for my money one of the best live albums ever recorded. Lou sang then with passion and vigor, something he only occasionally does on Lulu. Too often, he drones on and on and on. If you notice, I’ve used the word droning a lot, but it is truly the best way to describe Lou’s vocal performance—I hesitate to even call it singing—here.

He’s no match for Metallica when the band goes all speed metal on “Mistress Dread.” And if you want something you can hear but not unhear, listen to Lou drone on about sperm on “Frustration.” Seriously, he spends half the song talking about sperm. Even Hetfield seems embarrassed to be on the track, and he’s the guy that wrote and performed that awful “Temptation” jam in “Some Kind of Monster.”

There are some moody numbers that seem to be in Lou’s wheelhouse like “Dragon” and “Junior Dad.” These numbers are actually not bad except for the fact that they go on and on and on, for 11 and 19 (19!!!) minutes, respectively. The last seven minutes of “Junior Dad” are of a violin playing. Why did it need to go on so damn long? Loutallica’s best moments are when they keep things simple, with Metallica playing some heavy blues behind Lou’s Dylan-esque singing. It’s not done enough.

Critics, particularly in metal circles, are set to roast Lulu. The album isn’t that bad—it’s not a career killer—but its not something hardcore Metallica fans are going to appreciate. The Lou Reed/Metallica collaboration probably would have been better served by playing some Lou/Velvet Underground covers—like they did when they first collaborated at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert—and a few originals, as opposed to an ambitious concept album like this. Metallica always has been about taking chances and it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve alienated their fans. But they’re gonna need another Death Magnetic to make them forget about Loutallica.