Listening to the song again, I think the biggest problem with Metallica these days, to me, is the guitar tone. The overall production with everything else is great, drums and bass sound really good, even James' voice is on point, but the guitar tone just isn't there. At all. It's all wrong. It's close but just not quite there. The top end is all "shushy" fizz but no sizzle. and it's way too mid forward, with the wrong kind of mids emphasized. The character of the distortion too smeary and soft with too much sag in the mids, it's not nearly tight enough. It's almost like they're blending in a fuzz pedal in there somewhere.
If you listen to a song with a similar kind of vibe as this one, emotional energy, like say "It's Electric" on Garage Inc, you'll hear the difference, and it's not subtle.
I know I'm being super anal about this but, for one, this is a guitar forum, and two, guitar forum or not, it's hard to deny that guitar tone (or at least the end result of the guitar + bass tone) is arguably one of the biggest driving factors in the vibe of any metal album. It's important.