Revisiting: Metallica's Metallica (The Black Album)

 

Metallica (The Black Album) by Metallica

Release Date: 1991

Last Time I Listened: Last week. Spinning this album is what made me decide it needed to be an installment of Revisiting.

Metallica's fifth record was monumental. They had steadily built up a fan base over the years without much radio airplay by playing shows and establishing a reputation as a killer live band. So they were already pretty popular, especially for what was seen as an extreme metal band. But The Black Album caused that popularity to explode like an atomic bomb. EVERYBODY dug this album. I knew people who'd had no previous history with Metallica who now suddenly knew every word of Enter Sandman. I had an acquaintance back then who was all about country music. He had three exceptions: AC/DC, Guns n' Roses and The Black Album. This record was huge.

And I loved it. Even though I preferred ...And Justice for All and Master of Puppets, I was overjoyed to have an album by a real metal band that my non-metal friends (and about all I had back then was non-metal friends) would listen to. This album and Countdown to Extinction by Megadeth always trigger happy memories of cruising around east Idaho, talking shit on the C.B. radio and just being young and dumb. For a huge chunk of my life, The Black Album has been a sentimental favorite of mine.

The Verdict: I think I may have been blinded by sentiment because when I listen to The Black Album now, it's a chore to get through. I mean, this album is fucking boring. I get getting to a point where you're tired of playing complex, technical metal with tempo changes and riffs that verge on being progressive, but Black seems like a massive over-correction.

The album opens with Enter Sandman, perhaps the most well-known Metallica song ever. As tired as I am of hearing it, Sandman is a banger with a main riff that embeds itself in your head and just will not leave. I could do without the little kid nursery rhyme lyrics but it's a pretty good tune. The next song, Sad But True, is even better. This is arguably the single heaviest tune Metallica ever recorded and it boasts one of two guitar solos on the record that don't suck. So far, we're off to a good start.

Then track three, Holier Than Thou, hits and Black's biggest flaw becomes very clear. This album is full of plodding mid-tempo tunes that honestly start to blur together before too long. The Unforgiven saves things for a few minutes with its tale of growing up with an absentee father. That song's pretty epic.

The epicness doesn't last. Wherever I May Roam is a snooze and it's followed by Don't Tread on Me that's even more of a snooze because it brings the beats per minute down at the time where it feels like Metallica's stuck in second gear. It's also around this time that it becomes apparent that Kirk Hammett decided to compose all of his solos out of reprocessed Jimmy Page licks. Hammett's ability to mix the bluesy with the more exotic made his playing stand out. Here, he just sounds like he should be playing lead for some small-town bar band, not one of the biggest bands on the planet.

Then there's Nothing Else Matters, my absolute least favorite Metallica song. I'd rather be strapped down and forced to listen to that Lulu album they did with Lou Reed. It's not that it's a ballad. Metallica had been doing slower numbers like Fade to Black and One for years at that point. It's not James Hetfield trying to sound like He-Man Metal Singer one moment then crooning about trust the next moment, though that's pretty fucking annoying. It's that this song is so goddamn cliched and offers nothing in the way of insight. It's like Metallica decided they wanted to write a love song and then wrote the blandest, most insufferable love song of all time. Even though it contains the only other good guitar solo on Black, Hetfield's lead at the end of the song, I can't stand this song. 

There's the pretty good one-two punch of Of Wolf and Man and The God That Failed on the back half of Black. But by then, it's too late. I've long since checked out. If I'm not asleep then I'm pondering the implications of the idea that Metallica deserves to be hyped as the best metal band ever by dumbass rock writers considering that the only reason they got mainstream acceptance is that they record an album that sold over sixteen million units. And with all due respect to Joe Elliot, I don't believe that the fact that an album that sold 16 million copies means it's legitimately better than an album that "only" sold 5 million. Massive sales don't equal quality.

I get that Black is a lynchpin album for a lot of people. I know that it was a doorway into metal for tons of people, including many who now play in some of my favorite metal bands. I also admit that my taste has changed and that has an effect on how I experience this album now. But this record is a major mixed blessing to me now. The highlights are great. And while the lesser tracks aren't necessarily bad (with the exception of  Nothing Else Matters. Fuck that song. Seriously.) they're way too samey-sounding and lack energy and excitement. Given the choice, I'd rather spin Countdown to Extinction by Megadeth or Testament's The Ritual. Too much of The Black Album is as colorless as the album cover art.

Best Songs: Sad But True, The Unforgiven, Of Wolf and Man, The God That Failed