The so called “Black Album”, Metallica’s self-titled fifth album released in 1991, debuted at number one in ten countries and went on to become the first album in over 23 years to sell over sixteen-million copies by the end of the year 2009 is said to be their most popular album ever. I say it was the album that let many the fans of their first four albums know that Metallica was gone forever, replaced with a conformist, “radio friendly”, “mainstream media” pop rock band.
When I first heard Metallica, in 1984, it was the first time I had heard music that my mother had not introduced to me. I knew and loved every word The Doors had published, The Beatles, and Pink Floyd too, but I had never heard anything like this. This was loud, this was angry. This aggressive music demanded you stop and listen; it had meaning, and it would be heard. It was not about relationships, it was not about love, it had no care or concern about who was standing next to Sting or his lack of self-control. This was a call to arms, a plea to rebel against oppression, social injustice, and censorship. One song “Creeping Death”, is a religious question about the happenings in the Catholic/ Christian bible’s book of Exodus. This song caused me to stop and consider: “why would the all-powerful god of man need to barter and bully a Pharaoh in order to have his will done on earth?”
By contrast their self-titled venture has the song “Enter Sandman”, which at first glance could be a similar piece of opinion about religious practices, but it completely fails to carry the same loud, angry, rebellious voice that made their original fanbase so loyal. This whole album was written launch them into the “mainstream” and gain mass-market appeal. They set out to write only “radio friendly” songs, something that former bassist Cliff Burton had said they would never do. I wish I could find the exact quote but Metallica, as a band, said ‘we will never sell out.’ Then something changed, on September 27, 1986, Burton died while on tour for their last great album, Master of Puppets.
What came next was a pieced together album of unfinished songs that Burton had been working on previously. The remaining members of the band put together what they could and released “…and Justice For All” two years later. I could tell Burton had written a lot of it, but it did not feel the same, the edge was gone, it instead sounds singsong and a bit whiney. The righteous call to rebel against the “religious right”. Against those who tried to silence the voices of my generation, under Ronald Reagan’s administration, was gone. Replaced with the “radio friendly” self-titled album Metallica produced a great series of catchy choruses in singsong works that may have made Metallica a household name, but it also ostracized a large swath of those that supported them as artists. We were not concerned with joining the “mainstream”, to those of us that loved Metallica before the very word means conformist, mass-market, one-size fits all, thinking is not required here, simply be “one of us”. It embodies everything we were against, the “mainstream” is where people go to hear all the same music, and to wear all the same clothes, it is where you go if you want to be told what to feel, when to be outraged and when to be happy.
In further contrast let us look at another of the big Heavy Metal bands of that time, let us look at Anthrax not only because they both released their first albums in 1983 but because they were both known for the social and political commentary of their music. Up until this point Anthrax had, like Metallica, only received airtime on college radio stations and on MTV’s Head Banger’s Ball, which only aired at midnight on Friday and Saturday nights. Anthrax not only received all the same negativity and opposition as Metallica had for their sound and lyrics, but they were further demonized because of their name. Anthrax’s 1990 release Persistence of Time was came one year before the self-titled Metallica album and the divergence in the overall sound from the previous album, State of Euphoria, is minor and reflective of the general progression of the music and the band while keeping true to their beliefs and by continuing to produce loud, aggressive, works that reflect the bands commentary and concerns for humanity without worrying getting airtime on the local radio stations because they know, like Burton did, you do not have to sell-out your beliefs to sell out an concert hall.
Works Cited
“Metallica (Album).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 July 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallica(album)#Marketingand_sales.