This is known as the black album by most fans I think and it is the first Metallica album I bought straight from release rather than playing catch up with their discography. There is one good song on here and one semi-good song. The rest I would not play.
Sad But True – this is a pretty heavy amazing song, although slow. It crunches through you, especially live.
Enter Sandman – this is designed to be a single and went massive. It’s an OK song.
The rest of the album I could not tell you about from memory. This is interesting as when I saw Metallica at Donington in 1991 these were the only two songs that they played from this album, even though it had just come out.
I bought this on tape and I’ve just checked the NAS drive and amusingly I haven’t even updated my collection of this album to a complete digital version. I only have three songs from this album in digital. I also have Wherever I May Roam, but let’s face it, that’s a shit song.
This album marked a major decline in my appreciation of Metallica. There was a slight decline after “Justice”, but this one hastened the break up. Metallica went massive after this album and became mainstream. That’s when I stopped liking them. I’m not sure which way around the causation goes, whether their music changed and I stopped liking them or whether they became mainstream and so I stopped liking the music.
I did go to see Metallica play in Earls Court in about 1995 [just checked and it was October 12, 1996] and it was quite good but the new songs are shit and I really struggle to get past that. The show was filmed as the DVD Cunning Stunts. In that DVD one of the stuntmen is described as the “burning man”, not by his name by the band. This guy set himself alight over the complete tour every night and yet the band didn’t know his name. I guess that’s how it goes being a rock star but I didn’t like that.