METALLICA -METALLICA ALBUM REVIEW ~ Metal Music archive

Metallica - Metallica: Controversial since 1991

By BlackMetal213, April 26th, 2016

Oh, man. I’m really selling out here! Just like what many people believe Metallica did upon releasing this album. After releasing “…And Justice for All” three years prior in 1988, which is often considered to be the band’s finest album in terms of technicality and musical precision, Metallica released their self-titled album “Metallica” in 1991. Also known as “The Black Album”, this record is seen as the band’s first major turning point and their “sell-out” album. Personally, I’m not a fan of this album and I can see why so many people believe this. I think this is an over-produced album and it’s pretty generic, considering Metallica went from playing a fairly unique brand of thrash metal to a standard 1990s groove oriented heavy metal. This was actually my first metal album period and back when I was 12 or 13, I really dug it. In fact, I’d like this album until I was about 14 years old. After I heard “Master of Puppets” and “Ride the Lightning” and then “Death Magnetic” as it had just come out, I was exposed to Metallica’s thrash sound, and this album just fell short of anything else, aside from “Load”, “Reload”, and “St. Anger”. But I digress. This album is just a generic heavy metal album, but is it terrible? Is it offensive? Not really.

This album has some decent guitar riffs. Some are just downright groovy and catchy. The only problem I have with this is how damn poppy this album really is. If “pop metal” is a real thing, this album definitely falls into that category. The songs on this album differ greatly from the 9-minute epic tracks of old in favor of shorter songs that generally stay between 4 and 5 minutes long with a few exceptions. Song length doesn’t really matter, as plenty of the tracks on “Kill ‘Em All” are short, but those songs are more instrumentally proficient and contain cool, thrashy riffs. These songs are just boring most of the time. I guess the younger me thought this was the heaviest thing on the planet but after I grew up, I realized this album was really just not as appealing as I once thought. “Enter Sandman” is the most overplayed and overrated song ever to come out of the heavy metal genre, with its standard cookie cutter riff and annoying wah solo. “Sad but True” is another big song from this album but it basically just rehashes what Pantera began doing on their “Cowboys from Hell” album the year prior to this album. There are some decent songs on this album, ironically the three I’d say I like the most are “The Unforgiven”, “Nothing Else Matters”, and the melancholic “My Friend of Misery”. Why is this ironic? Because the first two of these songs are the other bigger, more well-known tracks from this album. Also, these three songs are slower, more depressing pieces. Heavier songs like the groove metal numbers I mentioned before, as well as songs that border thrash metal such as “The Struggle Within” and “Through the Never” actually don’t do it for me this time around. Why? Because they sound like they try too hard to relive the glory years of Metallica but just disappoint more than anything.

The reason I picked “Nothing Else Matters”, “The Unforgiven”, and “My Friend of Misery” as my favorite songs from this album mainly has to do with how damn somber these songs are. “Nothing Else Matters” is played mostly on an acoustic guitar with the exceptions of a few riffs and the solo, which while not super impressive, remains one of the song’s highlights. This song has an evident classical influence as well not only with the acoustic guitars, but also the strings in the background. I could imagine the look on many Metallica fans’ faces when they first heard this song. It was probably one of confusion or disgust but to this day, I still listen to this number every now and then. “The Unforgiven” sticks out to me as well, and it’s fairly similar to this song, as it utilizes acoustic guitars as well, but it’s also a bit different at the same time. It focuses on heavier verses and softer, atmospheric choruses. To my ears, there is an evident western feel to this song and the solo is, like “Nothing Else Matters”, one of the album’s finest. Because let’s face it: most of the solos on this album are just subpar. The final song I’m going to talk about in detail is “My Friend of Misery”. Compared to the other two I just went over this song is a bit heavier. It opens with a melancholic bass riff and the riffs follow the same pattern. It doesn’t implement any acoustic guitars and it’s probably my least favorite of these three. However, the atmosphere it possesses is amazing and the lyrics are really deep. Dark Tranquillity from Sweden actually covered this song and managed to make it sound better, in my opinion anyway.

So, aside from these songs, the guitar here is just plain generic. I already covered how “Enter Sandman” and especially “Sad but True” rely on groove over anything but the riffs are just stupid repetitive and simplistic. The thing is, I don’t have a real problem with repetition or simplicity considering some of the other bands I listen to. For Metallica, though, when you compare these tunes to those of the 1980s, you’re going to be disappointed. “Wherever I May Roam” is another song many people love from this album and sure, I guess the western-style intro (similar to a heavier sounding “The Unforgiven”) sounds kind of cool, but the riffs in this song don’t change hardly at all and it contains another wah guitar solo from Mr. Hammett that just sounds generic and “meh”. The guitar work on this album pretty much laid the foundation for “Load” and “Reload” in that Metallica essentially dumbed down their music although not as much as they would five years later.

The production on this album is just…not good. Actually, it is good. Too good. This is one of the most overproduced albums in metal. The instruments have no organic feel to them and I like my metal to sound real. Let’s face it, everything is going to have some sort of flaw. That’s what makes it music and that’s what makes it good in its own way. This album has no dirt whatsoever and is more polished than an old school black army combat boot. The drums are far too loud in the mix. Lars is already an extremely overrated drummer so when you turn up his volume, you take away from the other instruments and are left with a huge “thump thump thump” sound. I wouldn’t mind the drums as much if they weren’t louder than the guitars. The bass is audible, which is nice, although I didn’t really mind the muted bass on the previous album like a lot of people did. Bob Rock is either seen as a legendary producer, or the reincarnation of Satan himself. I won’t say either of these fit my opinion, but I do think he took a lot away from this album by overproducing it so damn much.

James Hetfield provides a decent vocal performance here but I much prefer his more abrasive style on the band’s thrash albums. Not that he is an aggressive vocalist but he had much more power behind his voice on the first four records. I won’t say too much about his singing, though, as I believe he is one of the most overrated singers in heavy metal. His voice is decent but I’m just not one to fan boy over him.

So, what’s the verdict here? “Metallica” is a 1990s heavy metal album that really just sounded like most of what other bands were doing at the time. Megadeth also began releasing fairly commercial-sounding stuff around this time, beginning in 1992, but the songwriting on all of their 1990s efforts is so much better than Metallica managed to achieve with this album. Sure, I like about three of the songs on this album quite a bit. But is that enough for me to say this is a solid album? Is it even good? Not really. But, as I asked earlier, is it terrible or offensive? No, I wouldn’t go that far. It’s just a generic metal album that falls very short of those that came before it. So there you have it. One of the most famous, as well as infamous, albums in history. The highly commercial self-titled release from Metallica.

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