Review Summary: A vast disappointment compared to their earlier work, but when stacked up against music in general, it's an inconsistent, often embarrassing but occasionally good hard rock album. Just don't get your hopes up for anything great.
1991, an important year. T2: Judgment Day was released, to inexplicable critical acclaim. One of the most successful gaming systems ever, the SNES, arrives. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers all release career-defining, still-classic albums. I was born. Yes, it was indeed a fine year for entertainment, or at least a busy one. It was also the year that Metallica shocked and disappointed metal fans and people of taste with the group’s mainstream concession to MTV, the self-titled or “black” album.
Now, there are few who would defend this album of being a thrash classic in the vein of its predecessors Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets and …And Justice For All (even the band itself. I read in an interview, and I swear this is true, that either Lars or Kirk was defending their reasons for making the black album by saying it made more chicks come to the shows). Hell, there are few that would call this a classic in any sense of the term. But this album is not the horrifying train wreck of mediocrity that many seem to be painting it as. Is it dreadful and wretched IN COMPARISON to the three albums released before it? Obviously. Are “Don’t Tread On Me,” “Holier Than Thou” and “Through The Never” tasteless jokes clearly meant to parody Metallica’s earlier thrash style? Of course. But this album, when held up to other hard rock albums instead of the legacy of brilliance that Metallica’s earlier work had indicated, is simply not the abomination that disappointed fans would have you believe. Albums like St. Anger would later redefine bad music in the way that some have suggested this does, but at least 2/3 of this album is NOT bad. Disappointing, frustrating, upsetting, yes- but universally bad? Well…
By now everybody has heard the album opener, “Enter Sandman.” Right off the bat this song establishes the tone for the rest of the album. Boring drums, similar and repetitive riffs, good but unoriginal soloing, good but not Burtonian bass, unending pretentiousness (come on, a spoken-word section with a child saying his prayers?), misused softness and horrible vocals. I will address each of these problems in turn. First of all, the drumming. Lars Ulrich continues to be the worst member of a possibly good band, only beaten by Axl Rose. I refer not to his drums, although they are uninteresting in the extreme, but to his preposterous ego and constant, constant headbutting with James Hetfield. Of course, he did help write some of their best songs, but time and time again he shows nothing but vapidity and smug rock-star pomposity. I am quite certain that sampled beats would be more enjoyable on this record than listening to Lars Ulrich constantly fail to deserve his insane fame.
Now for Kirk Hammet’s guitar work. (By the way, imagine if Kirk had delivered a performance like James’ here… his last name would have been the butt of more jokes than I can imagine) The riffs are not really poor but they are not especially original and they show none of the cool little off-time things that AJFA was chock full of. Instead we get catchy hard-rock staples like “Enter Sandman” and “Wherever I May Roam.” These songs are not bad, but they certainly don’t show a whole lot of excellent songwriting. Let’s just say that no riff here is as complex or interesting as anything Megadeth wrote. (The general marking point for Metallica’s plunge into mediocrity is to determine when they started sounding worse than Megadeth.) It’s just so hard to avoid comparing this album to Metallica’s early work that any discussion of songwriting immediately recalls those earlier days. The solos however are as good as the bulk of their earlier stuff. Not every solo is good, and certainly none reach the phenomenal level of “One” (best song ever written in my opinion), but the better ones wouldn’t sound out of place on Ride the Lightning. Songs like “The Unforgiven” actually have very good solos, in my opinion. All I have to say about the bass is that it is audible and actually reasonably decent. “The God That Failed” starts off pretty nicely. However, it is nothing special.
Now the pretentiousness. I understand that many people consider AJFA to be a pretentious album. That album is chock-full of riffs, solos, interludes, bridges and choruses to the point where each composition is at least a small epic in and of itself. No song ever got too pretentious for its own good, though, in my opinion. Everything felt lean and mean, though that may have been the production. Here, there is unending pretentiousness from… um… actually, every pretentious aspect seems to originate from James Hetfield. The lyrics have stopped dealing with the cool topics of before. The worst we got before was James whining about being trapped under ice or being insane (is there a single Metallica album that did not deal with this concept?). Now, not a single song shows the sort of social activism we may have once heard from the band. We hear James’ lame fantasy lyrics regarding lycanthropy, the universe and the sandman. These are bad, unsubtle and obnoxious by anybody’s standards. The reason I mention these as pretentious is because James was apparently pretentious enough to think that they deserved to be on a non-parody album.
Other pretentious attributes include the aforementioned spoken-word section on Enter Sandman, making most of the non-thrash songs be FAR longer than they merited, making a song about OUTER SPACE, and making an album with about half as many musical ideas as Master of Puppets be longer than that album. The Middle Eastern feeling on “Wherever I May Roam” is a bit smug too, as is the horn intro to the otherwise actually decent “The Unforgiven.” Now the out-of-place softness. I don’t mind when a heavy band goes soft. “The Unforgiven” is actually quite a good song and might be a filler track on “Master of Puppets.” However, the rest of the soft parts seem employed cynically, as a cash-grabbing move rather than to make a good song a la “Fade to Black” or “One.” Every song seems to occupy an odd limbo; the thrashers seem generic and below these guys, the soft stuff seems forced and cynical, and the rest is all crappy hard-rock. Some may call this a streamlining or a more mature sound than before, but to me, it seems more awkward and self-conscious than a fat kid playing strip poker. Very little clicks satisfactorily; the awkwardness is clearly some sign of Kirk and Jason’s trepidation as they moved into these commercial waters, prodded off the dock by the thuggishly grinning James and Lars.
Finally, James’ vocals. His singing voice has “improved,” if by that you mean “is noticeably better when he sings older material without adding unnecessary flourishes and wails of ‘yeah’ to every chorus.” However, nothing he sings here sounds especially good, except for “The Unforgiven.” I cannot emphasize how problematic James’ hard rock singing voice is. He tries for an aggressive, forceful demeanor occasionally, but as he is singing about werewolves and the sandman, it obviously fails. THERE IS A REASON THAT METAL SINGERS STICK TO SINGING ABOUT THINGS PEOPLE SHOULD SOUND AGGRESSIVE ABOUT! James’ scream is essentially gone on this record. Every moment where anger is portrayed comes across as disastrous. Some sort of transition point between the inconsistent vocal mix they used earlier, and the squeaky-clean production on this one, would have been ideal. As it is, anybody familiar with the conviction James used to sing with will be mortified by the forced and obnoxious way he sings. His soft vocals are fairly good but the material they are singing is subpar. Sort of the opposite of Kurt Cobain. Anyway…
It may sound as if this record is worthy of nothing but scorn. However, that is not the case. Despite the horrendousness of “Don’t Tread On Me,” it is, if not redeemed, at least ignored due to the presence of “The Unforgiven.” Although the verses contain all of James’ least appealing vocal quirks, the lyrical subject matter is as close to early Metallica as we ever get (except for “Don’t Tread On Me,” which ends up sounding a bit too condoning) and the chorus is great. The solo is the best part about it, though. All these elements come together for quite a good song. “Sad But True” is sort of decent, although I already feel guilty about saying that. “The God That Failed” has all right parts. Quite a few of the problems I have expressed are a bit too biased toward early Metallica, and they would not be distracting to a first-time Metallica listener.
However, this does not make up for the fact that one of the best metal bands ever (certainly in the top 100 bands of any genre for the whole century) essentially ruined a promising career with a stilted and occasionally horrible bid for radio acceptance. Only Kirk shows any sign of artistic integrity, but how long can you associate with total sell-outs and complacently accept their demands before you are tainted? The Black Album is not bad, not as a whole, but even a newcomer will find the vocal delivery frequently poor, and imagining Metallica as a typical generic hard rock band is as heartbreaking as the coda to “One.” It’s not awful- but don’t listen. On the rare chance that you've never heard Metallica, you won't be impressed enough to seek out their earlier stuff. At least I hope you won't be.
Tell me what you thought
