Metallica's Black Album: Yay or Nay?

[ZombieHavoc]

for some the black album was the high point of Metallica's career and for others it was the beginning of the end. once and for all, do you like the record?

i give it a nay.

[vertigo_phreeze]

i like it, i think its a great album, even if its my second or third least favorite...but i think its funny how people call Load and Reload the "sell out" albums when Black was created from the beginning to be more "radio friendly". i haven't seen the documentry yet, but i have yet to dislike anything from their career, i always liked pretty much everything to varying degrees.

[Neil]

Eh. We often don't like to acknowledge, but ... And Justice For All, great as it was, was the actual beginning of the end. The was a spirit that Cliff brought to the group that wasn't there anymore and Justice is somewhat coasting on that spirit.

I'm unwilling to vote it the bane of metal's existence. It's a solid rock album with a couple of decent metal tunes, "Of Wolf And Man", etc. So I won't vote. It's a long step down from a group that was inspirationally brilliant above and beyond their peers.

[SlightlyMad]

I like it more than any of their other albums up to that point & haven't really cared for anything they've done since.

I saw them live during the "Nowhere Else to Roam" tour & enjoyed the show immensely. That being said, I've never been much of a metal fan, more of a rock fan & these days I listen to more trip-hop, jazz & funk.

So, in a way, to me, the black album was a high point in Metallica's career and the beginning of the end. But, personally, I do quite like it.

[Voncaster]

Neil I can't tell if you like ...And Justice For All, but its one of my favorite albums. I think Metallica said they couldn't play any louder or faster than Justice, and so its the pinnicle of their thrash metal days.

I respect the fact that Metallica said hey this is no longer us and changed up their style to reflect themselves with the Black Album and later releases, but its just doesn't hold up to me. I'll take pre-Bob Rock Metallica over Bob Rock Metallica any day of the week.

[Hiromi]

The album's good, only has one or two weak tracks on it(God that Failed, Friend of Misery), and Struggle Within is just freaking awesome and one of the most underated and overlooked tracks in their career.

[Core]

Eh. We often don't like to acknowledge, but ... And Justice For All, great as it was, was the actual beginning of the end. The was a spirit that Cliff brought to the group that wasn't there anymore and Justice is somewhat coasting on that spirit.


That pretty much sums up how I feel as well. I remember the press interview at which a teary-eyed Metallica announced that the new album, which at the time was Justice, would have songs on it that Cliff had helped compose. I picked up the album a few days after it was released and was floored by it--it was exactly what I had hoped a post-Cliff album would be, and the band didn't seem to have lost any of their original intensity.

Then MTV came into their lives. In another interview, Hetfield was adamant that they weren't going to become a commercial band who made videos for every song on an album, that they only wanted to make an artistic statement with one video about one song they felt particularly passionate about. And that video was great, just as good as the song that it was portraying. This was back in the days when MTV still played videos, so the video for "One" soon found itself on maximum rotation, while Metallica found themselves with a wide-and-expanding audience that they never had before.

Then there was a 3 year dry spell. They returned in '91 (?) with the Black album. And on the first few spins, I really did enjoy it. But something was clearly changed, despite my inability to, at the time, pinpoint what it was. Hetfield had had that horrible accident with the pyrotechnics, literally melting the skin off his bones, on the last tour, so I thought that maybe his injury had altered the band's style. Regardless, it was clear that Cliff was no longer with us, nor was he with the band for that matter. And the videos promoting the new album, the videos Hetfield had sworn in an interview weren't even going to be made, seemed by-and-large devoid of the artistic composition of their first video. "Unforgiven" is a possible exception to that, but the video for "Nothing Else Matters" is nothing more than the band mugging for the camera, posing as the rock icons they despised just 3 years earlier.

There are a few good tracks on the Black album, ones that stand up to repeated listenings, but the power that fueled the first 5 LP's wasn't with them anymore. They stopped being a band that would drop my jaw with intricate riffs built around power chords that many folks thought Black Sabbath had used up and exhausted and instead became a run of the mill rock band cramming mediocre filler around 3 or 4 good tracks to pad out an album.

I had a smattering of hope left for Load, but what might have been a decent album from some other band, from Metallica wound up being a rusty fourteen-inch gutter spike knocked deeper into my temple with each track.

I don't think the black album is the bane of metal existence, but that is what I voted, since it is the only "nay" choice.

[Neil]

Neil I can't tell if you like ...And Justice For All, but its one of my favorite albums. I think Metallica said they couldn't play any louder or faster than Justice, and so its the pinnicle of their thrash metal days.

I respect the fact that Metallica said hey this is no longer us and changed up their style to reflect themselves with the Black Album and later releases, but its just doesn't hold up to me. I'll take pre-Bob Rock Metallica over Bob Rock Metallica any day of the week.
I wasn't trying to be oblique. I said Justice is "great". It is. It's just also a tiny step down from their previous albums for me. There's just a kernel of something missing.

And, yes, I respect they changed as they aged, too, it just ultimately took them down a road where they were no longer visionaries in any field, just talented musicians following in another field occasionally with moderate but dwindling artistic success.

[ghostrider666]

While there are a couple good songs on the black album, it signaled an end to Metallica as they were, & also a major setback for metal in general at the time.
NAY!!!

[Davideaux]

It is what introduced me to Metallica. It led me to getting the first albums, which I loved more than Black Album.

I say it's a 'yay' but it was the last really good thing they ever did. So sad to see... :( :( :(

[Alex]

Thats hard to vote on.
I like it as an album, i don't like it as a Metallica album, since everything after is what i don't like about Metallica.
So, bascicly, i like it as an album, but i liked them better before.

[Wu Hsi Wu]

I think it is a great album. My husband thinks it was thier last good record & everything after is shit. I have always been more of a MEGADETH fan as opposed to my husband who was always hardcore METALLICA, so he is more bitter. I appriciate all of METALLICA'S music, old or new. :D

[Deathstroke]

I loved it!

Great album, and that song "Of Wolf and Man" is spectacular.

[cactusmaac]

I like it a lot.

But creatively after that came out they just ran out of ideas.

[Ottmeister X]

Metallica is the super group that GnR could have been. I'm not much of a Metallica fan, but I can recognize what they have accomplished and what a major influence they have been in music.

The reason people gripe about the Black album and afterwards is they finally hit a chord that made more than the metal community listen to them. Kind of the same boat as Green Day with punk. I think Metallica has pretty much done great stuff all the way through with maybe the exception of the last album.

In my opinion, once again not a big Metallica fan, the Black Album is better than Appetite.

[kmeyers]

I liked the Black album. It was the last Metallica album that only had a couple of not great songs. It's a solid album. After that they put out albums that only had a couple of good songs on them, and the rest were not great.

[TheLewisShow]

I like the Black Album. I think it was a gateway for most people in my generation to get turned onto metal. Between Metallica and Tool I was going to forever listen to the loud stuff.

I think Metallica at that point hit a catch 22 and should have thought about ending it all there (in hindsight).

If they kept their long hair and had the same 1986 sound they would be just as much a laughing stock as they are now for being stuck in a time warp. Just the same as their awful attempt to evolve. I'm convinced of that.

[bert]

The album bores me to tears.

Seriously, I haven't listened to it in years. . (mental note that I have to clear out my CD's I no longer listen to).

As recently as last month tho, I pulled out the vinyls of both "Ride the Lightning" and "Kill Em All" to listen to.

My favorite Metallica album is "Master of Puppets", and I think the last great thing they did was ". . and Justice for All"

Honestly, I didn't even buy "Load/Reload". .and "St. Anger" -- based on the 1st single, I wouldn't like . . so I didnt bother.

So, for me, I don't HATE the Black Album, but I don't like it either. . it just lays there like a still-born.