Review Summary: James Hetfield was better at straight-up thrash vocals, thankfully the other band members bail him out well enough.
Metallica's
Black Album has been often been labelled as a sell-out, in fact its now synonymous with the term. It divided critics when it came out and it continues to divide them now. There’s no doubt it was a departure from the sound of their magnum-opus
Master Of Puppets, and there’s definitely a more commercial approach to be heard. So the question that has long been pondered is this: “Was the move to a more radio-friendly sound a good one?”
The Black Album is not terrible, but nor is it astoundingly great. Rather it tends to stretch towards the latter while keeping a vein of the former. The vein of course being James Hetfield’s vocals and the stretch being just about everything aside from the lyrics which fall between the two.
It was always accepted during Metallica’s early years that Hetfield was a terrible singer. Within the genre of thrash, however, he did fine. His growls were acceptable and that was all that was ever asked. He can no longer get away with that on this album though. His attempts at (relatively) clean singing are average at best and absolutely horrific at worst. Second track “Sad But True” may be one of Metallica’s crowd favourites but that doesn’t excuse Hetfield from sounding horribly nasally and faux-angry when he yells the hook. Aside from that his delivery is simply bland, with very little variation to make him anything more than average. While there are exceptions to this (namely “The Unforgiven” and “Nothing Else Matters”) he can’t hold it through the entire song and it suffers because of it.
The lyrics range from shamelessly cheesy (“The Unforgiven”) to catchy and anthemic (“Don’t Tread On Me”) and then just terrible (“The God That Failed”). Thankfully they stick to the second option for a majority of the 12 tracks. Nevertheless, it’s hard not to try and skip “The God That Failed” when the first line immediately tells you Metallica have run out of steam.
“Pride you took
Pride you feel
Pride that you felt when you'd kneel”
Here comes the blessing (or issue, depending on how you look at the album) though. No song is perfect, but neither do they wallow in piles of putrid trash (until “The God That Failed” and “My Friend Misery”, when it’s obvious they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel). While “The Unforgiven” has horrible lyrics it’s saved by Hetfield’s best vocals on the album next to “Nothing Else Matters”, as well as his and Hammett’s spaghetti western guitar which adds an interesting flavour to the track.
Really though, most of the credit goes towards the guitar work, which saves most of the album from falling into disarray. The riffs are interesting and the guitar solos are great throughout (“Of Wolf And Man” has my personal favourite). As well as this they lay the atmosphere on thickly with songs like “Enter Sandman”, managing to sound dark and creepy without going over the top. It’s just a shame the bass is inaudible for most of the album, if it had been more prominent that may have been enough to bump this to a 4.5.
Not to neglect one of the most famous drummers in the world (note: not the best) Lars performs adequately. His drum fills, though nothing special, are interesting and skilful enough to keep the momentum going and his beats are consistently great, driving the other instruments forward with zest.
One of the best songs on the album, “Holier Than Thou”, offers perhaps the best example of the instrumental section’s strengths. Beginning with a pounding guitar and drum combination and then moving into a groovy riff and driving, bass-heavy rhythm. The song then switches between those two elements until the final minute where the guitar solo kicks in quickly followed by a short section of groovy bass. The whole track ends up sticking as a great example of what Metallica were aiming for, catchy, groovy hard rock.
So with the instrumental section saving most of the album from being aural torture it’s hard to think of this as anything more than a 4. Though it comes close at points, it overall struggles over the 3.5 mark, particularly with the dip near the end. The album’s only redeeming feature at that point is “The Struggle Within”.
