I hate
Metallica's Black Album, and frankly I can't for the life of me understand why so many other
Metallica fans are ready to fellate the supposed genius of the sixty-two minute beast of repetition, limp-wristedness, and flat ideas. This album was to be the gateway to some of the worst music ever to fall under the title 'metal', or to ever be referred to by the band as 'experimental', 'mature', and 'progressive'.
And don't worry--I'm not just here to whine about why it's 'not as heavy as
Kill 'Em All. I have real reasons to believe that this album is one of the most over-hyped ever.
The first song works as a perfect outline for the biggest issue of the album. We have a four minute stinker of a song titled
Enter Sandman, whose main riff, repeated far past the point of oblivion, was ripped off from a band called
Excel in their song called "Tapping Into the Emotional
Void". The riff isn't even played as well by
Metallica as
Excel played it in their song. By the end the stolen riff doesn't even sound cool anymore--it's annoying. Where's the sense of progression that earlier
Metallica tracks like Call of
Ktulu and One had? The only good thing about the track is the solo, and that definitely is not enough to save the song. From the get-go, it's clear that
Metallica had very few ideas after they ran out of songs to steal from Dave Mustaine and couldn't rely on Cliff Burton to write good stuff. The
Riffs are uninspired most of the time to the point of being embarrassing for anyone who likes pre-1988
Metallica (seriously, listen to the guitar 'melodies' in Don't
Tread on Me and tell me honestly that the tunes are just as well-built as in songs like
Orion).
Orion, good
Riffs aren't extinct on this album. There are good moments here and there (
The Unforgiven has some nice melodies, My Friend of
Misery fuses guitar and bass well throughout,
Wherever I May Roam has some catchy stuff in it). Even some of the bad
Riffs are elevated by the other guitar fiddling with improvisation in the background... but the good moments are repeated and repeated until they aren't good anymore. Songs like
Sad But
Orion are irritating and full of moments that would have barely passed as filler on
Ride the Lightning, what with its awkward clunkiness. At least every song still features at least one guitar solo that's pretty good. A few are kind of weak, but for the most part, the solos are still there and well-done.
On a structural basis, the songs go for a verse-chorus structure, which in and of itself isn't very harmful, but on top of that, the climaxes to the songs (apart from the solos) are pretty much just alterations on the choruses. The climax of
Enter Sandman features a whispered section that's trying to be dark and ominous (sounds goofy to me) which doesn't add anything to the progression since it's following the same melody with the same rhyme scheme;
Sad But
Orion's climax is another chorus with each lyric sustained.
Aside from that, there's the sound. I think it's the only thing I can strongly compliment in the album, because everything's crisp and the bass is thankfully more audible than in
Justice for All, but at this point, it's not really surprising, considering that
Metallica already had a ton of money to throw at producers. I think that all the levels are nice and the instruments are fairly even to one another. The sound is pretty dry and clean, pretty much the stereotype of the commercial rock album, but it's hard to complain about. The band manages to get some great grit out of the guitars at times, and the acoustic sections resonate warmly. The drums sound a bit thin despite being loud enough, but that's pretty much minor. Hetfield's voice is fore-fronted in the mix, but I wouldn't quite call this a good thing.
Yes, Hetfield's voice was getting worse from
Master of Puppets and onwards, but now the sound of it isn't interesting anymore, and on many occasions Hetfield struggles to hit notes with melody. Mostly he's just shouting lines in a way that is sort of accented by the music. He also seems to put a drawl in a lot of the vowels that makes him sound like a bad country singer, which is the absolute god-damn last thing any singer in a metal band would ever, ever want. He also adds a lot of unnecessary little "Ah's" and "Oh's" on the end of his lines, which I just find baffling. It's an incredibly juvenile, idiotic way of trying to communicate energy and enthusiasm, and it's very irritating. Maybe some of the absolutely intolerable sections on the Black album (most of
Sad But
Orion and Holier than
Thou) would have been made better if he was singing like on
Ride the Lightning and yelling with the energy of
Hit the Lights, but it's hard to say. With only a few memorable and competent moments, I think you could have gotten some really awesome thrash vocalists in there and it would have made shit-all difference. I should mention that Hetfield does manage to shine in all of the softer sections. He handles
Nothing Else Matters pretty well, for example. But when things get chuggy, he simply cannot sing and I'm not even sure he's trying. Get some hobo off the street and give him a nickel to yell for you.
Hobo > Hetfield.
The drumming is also pitifully uninteresting. I don't find Ulrich too much of a stand-out drummer on any
Metallica record, despite what
Metallica-worshippers say about him being some sort of
God, but here he's absolutely average, lacking anything interesting or creative. No
Power or aggression, nothing wild or out of the box, and the patterns used throughout the album are, like so much else here, samesy. I really can't say too much about the drumming here, since all there really is to say is that it's boring and predictable. I would even say that anyone who really believes Ulrich to have untouchable drumming skills really needs to listen to some real metal or even some jazz fusion, because most metal/jazz drummers out there can outplay the guy with their eyes closed, especially on this album.
The Unforgiven is the only song that I like here. Unlike the pretentiousness and cheesiness of
Nothing Else Matters, the emotion comes off better here, mostly because it's integrated with guitar crunch and heaviness that seem to carry Hetfield's voice. Speaking of which, Hetfield's voice doesn't make me want to slit my wrists here. The dry-throated country-esque wails are kept more minimum, and his lighter vocal approach really works in the bridge sections. The
Riffs are utilized better and everything feels more in harmony working towards a pretty rocking solo.
Again, the song is held back by a lack of progression (it doesn't seem to climax other than the fact that Hetfield yells a few lines around a solo). While it is a good song and a clear stand out from the rest of the uninspired garbage on the rest of the album, it is still one of
Metallica's weaker ballads (One and Sanitarium kicks its ass by comparison). There are a few other songs on the album that might've been nice had they done more than repeat a riff for what seems like eternity.
Wherever I May Roam starts promisingly enough but lacks passion like so many other songs here and gets boring by the end.
Nothing Else Matters is passable, and decent as background listening music, but when any thought is applied to it, it kind of shows itself as a cheesy, over-sentimental mess that seems to me to be
Metallica's attempt to re-capture the angsty magic of
Fade to Black. I will say that the flourishes of guitar solo in the breaks sound pretty awesome, though.
And I think the song would have worked wonders as an instrumental, because Hetfield's ugly voice does start to bog down the emotional possibilities of the track once he starts yelling. I actually did a search and found a fan-made instrumental version of the song that was a digital alteration of the original, and I found it ten times better (I have attached this version of the song to the bottom of this review).
I should specify that I don't mind a band who starts writing heavy music and ends up writing softer, quieter stuff, nor do I mind a band who completely deviates from their original formula to experiment. People who hate
Metallica past the 90s are often accused of being obsessed with having their music only a certain way, and I'm here to say that I think that's bullshit.
Metallica fails when it comes to doing something new because they don't understand what works and what doesn't aside from the commercial appeal mentality that was hammered into them by Bob Rock. I think
Metallica's Black Album would have been better if it was softer, actually. An acoustic soft rock album would have been fine with me, given that the best moments on here are all in
The Unforgiven and
Nothing Else Matters. The heavy times are listless and uninspired; all the
Riffs have a "DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN" quality to them and hardly vary from song to song, and anything that sticks out is over-repeated. The element of unflinching wayward originality that made
Metallica's earlier efforts so worthy to me was the very strong sense of melody blended in with the energy. Every riff in songs like Four Horsemen, One, and
Hit the Lights kicked total ass, regardless of the heaviness or whatever tone-related element. Here, every time
Metallica tries to be fast or energetic or heavy, they come off as predictably boisterous, lacking style or subtlety or intelligence. I think there are plenty of moments that are squandered or not explored enough throughout the album (again, the fusion of guitar and bass throughout the
Riffs of My Friend of
Misery). Sometimes the album comes off as obnoxious, cheesy, corny, and even pretentious with such lyrics as:
"
Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And Nothing Else Matters".
All in all,
Metallica's most commercially-successful album is fittingly completed by how soulless and dull it is. It plays everything family-safe, lacks any sense of originality or passion, and marks the beginning of a new corporate
Metallica who falls so low as to take advice from Bob Rock that leaving guitar solos out of a
Metallica album is a good idea based on marketability (I am of course talking about
St. Anger). Here's a little bit of quote from a fan attempting to defend the album that I found online: "YOUR TALKING ABOUT A BAND THAT
HAS SOLD 80 MILLION ALBUMS AN TO SAY THEY SUCK FROM BLACK ALBUM ON IS TOTAL STUPID". You'll notice that the only defence that seems to come up is predicated on how much the band has sold without regard for the actual music. This, to me, epitomizes the essence of what modern
Metallica, and by extension, the Black Album, is. A few good moments here and there isn't enough to fix the Black Album; it only reminds me that this money-hungry band used to write music that was far better. It deserves the title of 'best metal album' about as much as Justin Bieber deserves the title of 'musical visionary'.
And it could have been much, much better.
That, and thinking about how much worse St Anger was prevented me from giving this a 4 or 5 out of 20.
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