Metallica (black album) - Metallica (1991)

Ideated from: August albums

I had a lot of ambivalence about this one, because I was pretty well out of being a metalhead and I was overreacting the other way. I didn’t want to admit how much i liked the music that was kind of out of step with the moment. On top of that, Metallica was clearly making a play for a bigger audience with a record that was more radio-ready hard rock than the bashing, thrashing stuff that had made them famous. So it was easy to be hipster-ish about Metallica selling out, but also I was hipster-ish on top of that with a “oh, you still listen to metal?” sort of note. Srsly, if i ever meet 18-year-old me, I’d probably punch the insufferable prick in the neck.

But enough about my self-loathing. There’s lots of other kinds of loathing on this record. In contrast to how I felt listening to Pearl Jam again yesterday, this one holds up really well to my ears. The playing is crisp and well-recorded. There are lots of stories about the band getting challenged by producer Bob Rock to go deeper and pay more attention to details on the sound and the lyrics. It really shows. Nobody would complain about For Whom The Bell Tolls not being hard enough, but the lyrics on those early tracks are often a little sophomoric, dungeons-and-dragons-y. Whereas a tune on here like Unforgiven is a really top notch lyric, imo, and the slower doomier music matches it well.

Whatever else you hear in this, you can’t deny the historical moment: this is the sound of one of the more popular underground thrash bands turning themselves into the biggest metal band in the world.