Metallica – The Black Album
There’s a reason this is the best selling album of the SoundScan era, okay? Incredibly tight songwriting combined with some of the best mixing on a metal album of its time (it’s still amazing to this day) resulted in an album that has sold over 16 million copies. Just let that sink in for a second, okay?
When it comes to this album, what makes it better for people who are trying to get into the genre is a few things:
1) James Hetfield isn’t barking his lyrics as he did on most previous songs. Instead, he’s a bit more restrained in his presentation but that doesn’t mean there’s an ounce less energy. You can hear the determination and the force and his lyrics, which are actually far more interesting and poetic than people give him credit for, really shine.
2) The songs aren’t as thrashy as before. Yeah, they still have tons of aggression but they’re not coming at you like machine gun fire. Instead, there is a more methodical approach to them, which works fantastically.
3) The song lengths aren’t as daunting. The longest song is “My Friend of Misery”, which clocks in at 6:47. Looking at their previous album, …And Justice For All, the shortest song there was 5:12. The average song length on that album was between 6 and 7 minutes while The Black Album saw it more around the 5 to 6 minute range. While metalheads and people who love classical music might not mind longer songs, the general population definitely notice such things.
Ultimately, it’s a fantastic album whose popularity suggests that everyone should give it a chance. It’s like watching Star Wars or The Godfather. Ya simply gotta do it to understand a lot of the culture that surrounds you.
