Back to Black: Remembering Metallica’s ‘Black Album,’ 25 Years Later

Twenty-five years after the release of “The Black Album,” Metallica are still struggling to recapture lightning in a bottle.

For the first seven years of their career, Metallica’s main objective was to be the loudest, heaviest, fastest, and most mind-blowing band on the planet. They had no commercial aspirations and sought to rail against what they perceived as the vacuous, frivolous mainstream radio rock poisoning the airwaves.

Then, after touring for their fourth album, 1988’s …And Justice for All, Metallica had a change of heart and underwent a striking, abrupt transformation. The disc that followed, which featured a jet-black cover, barely visible coiled serpent, and the band’s logo, would thereafter be known as “The Black Album,” even though its official name was Metallica. And it would cause major waves within and outside of the music industry. For Metallica, the eponymous release was filled with mid-paced songs that relied on simplicity, atmosphere, and groove — and symbolized a new beginning.

While some thrash purists considered it an abomination upon release — a sign that Metallica had done the unthinkable and “sold out” — the album featured some of the best melodic metal songs ever recorded. There was the brooding, anthemic “Enter Sandman,” the defiant, militaristic “Don’t Tread on Me,” the propulsive “Of Wolf and Man,” and not just one but two heartrending guitar ballads, “The Unforgiven” and “Nothing Else Matters.” And within all the tuneful commercial metal lay razor-edged gems, like the pugilistic “Holier Than Thou” and the serpentine “Sad But True,” which hinted at the old Metallica and cemented the notion that Metallica had not cashed in, but had merely grown up and were ready for bigger things.

Before “The Black Album” came out a quarter-century ago — on Aug. 12, 1991 — the band was barely appreciated outside the thrash-metal community. Then, two weeks prior to its release, “Enter Sandman” was serviced to rock radio. Soon after, Metallica’s world was irrevocably altered. Some of band’s old fans detected the authenticity in the songwriting, while newcomers were attracted by the directness of the music and the emotion behind the vocals. Metallica debuted at #1 on Billboard’s album chart and remained there for four weeks.

Surely, Metallica would have relished the idea of selling millions of records before they started working on “The Black Album,” but that wasn’t their intent when they got back from the road in 1990 and began writing new songs. They were tired of having to write and learn complex, multifaceted material and they wanted to make music that was fun and easy to play.

“Halfway through the [Damaged] Justice tour, we came offstage one night,” drummer Lars Ulrich said in the book Birth School Metallica Death. “We’d just played ‘Blackened,’ ‘One,’ ‘Eye of the Beholder,’ ‘…And Justice for All,’ and ‘Harvester [of Sorrow] — and we were like, ‘This s— is f—ed up to play.’ It was really difficult. Every night became an exercise in not f—ing up. We just decided, ‘This is stupid… enough of this.’ When me and [frontman] James [Hetfield] started writing [for Metallica], we listened to the Misfits, the Rolling Stones, AC/DC — all these bands that wrote three-minute songs.”

Metallica’s decision to change direction couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. In an era that eschewed slick ‘80s hair metal and applauded gritty, angst-laden rock from the gut, songs from Metallica received regular radio airplay alongside Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Red Hot Chili Peppers. On Halloween 1991, the album was certified triple-platinum by the RIAA. By the end of the next year, it was sextuple-platinum. To date, “The Black Album” has sold more than 16 million copies in the U.S. alone.

The process of creating the deceptively simple album was multifaceted and involved. The band started working on the new songs in the summer of 1990, and on Sept. 13 they met at Ulrich’s house and recorded rough demos for “Enter Sandman,” “Sad But True,” “Wherever I May Roam,” and “Nothing Else Matters.” When they listened back to the tape and played it for their management, they realized that their efforts to write songs that were easy to play yielded a new heavy-yet-vulnerable style of composition that had the potential to break boundaries. The music was unabashedly metal, but it was surprisingly accessible.

“Me, James, and [our manager] Cliff Burnstein sat down and Cliff said, ‘If we want to really go for it, we can take this thing to a lot more people,” Ulrich said in the book Enter Night. “But that will mean we’ll have to do certain things that on the surface seem like the same games other people play.’ The idea was to cram Metallica down everybody’s f—ing throat all over the f—ing world.”

Added guitarist Kirk Hammett: “We said, ‘OK, we’re gonna make an album, we’re gonna put a lot of shorter songs on it, we’re gonna get these f—ing songs on the radio and we’re just gonna indoctrinate the entire universe with Metallica. That was our goal, and that’s what we did.”

First, Metallica had to find a producer capable of taking their angry, edgy music and giving it a sound that would appeal to the masses. The options were limited. They had already worked Guns N’ Roses producer Mike Clink on …And Justice for All and the two failed to bond, forcing Metallica to bring back Flemming Rasmussen, who had produced Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets. They considered Def Leppard producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange, but decided he was too hands-on and experimental, requiring guitar parts to be layered through hundreds of takes and complex digital manipulation. That left Canadian producer Bob Rock, who had worked on two of the biggest-selling rock records of 1990, Mötley Crüe’s Dr. Feelgood and the Cult’s Sonic Temple.

“Dr. Feelgood sounded incredible,” Ulrich told MTV. “It had more low end and kick drum than we ever heard before. We had recognized at this point that the …And Justice for All album was on the thin side in terms of its lyrics and its sound, so we decided to track down this Bob Rock and see what his story is. The first thing that he told me was that he felt that we had never made a record that was up to his standards. That was a bit of a battle cry.”

Aggravated by Rock’s directness, Metallica considered working with someone else, but ultimately decided to see where the partnership with the big-time producer would take them. They had already taken a leap of faith with the music for the album, so it only made sense to work with a producer that had a totally different approach from what they were used to. At first the arrangement seemed doomed to fail.

“We had never been challenged before and nobody ever really sat and said, ‘Well, you can also do it this way, and you can also try it in a different key or why don’t you try this kind of drum fill,’” Ulrich told MTV. “We were like, ‘Why don’t you go f— yourself and stop telling us what to do. Just get us that bass sound like the Mötley Crüe album. But as the process wore on, we very reluctantly realized that maybe this guy had some relevant suggestions and he sort of won us over.”

Rock didn’t just challenge Metallica to write and play in different ways, he forced them to up their game. Realizing that clean, economical drumming was crucial for the songs to work, he set aside a room in the studio for Ulrich to practice and sharpen his chops. And he worked intently with Hetfield on vocals. When the singer brought in wordy lyrics, Rock encouraged him to be more succinct and get to the point as simply as possible. Hetfield was, perhaps, the band member most resistant to Rock’s ideas, resulting in the producer nicknaming him “Dr. No.” With band and producer locking horns, the first three months in One on One Recording Studios in Los Angeles were fraught with tension.

“We really put him through the ringer,” the singer and guitarist said in Birth School Metallica Death. “We were testing him, making sure that this guy can drive the Metallica train.”

“Our reaction to [Bob’s] proposals was initially negative,” agrees Ulrich. “[At times] all hell broke loose. [He] really started challenging us and pushing us and arguing with us and he didn’t take any of our bulls—.”

To meet Rock’s exacting demands, Hetfield started seeing a vocal coach, who helped improve his range, tonality, and ultimately boosted his confidence in his singing. The more Metallica opened their minds to Rock’s ideas, the more both benefited from the experience.

“The fact of the matter is, Bob Rock’s got an incredible ear for attitude and feeling,” Ulrich said in Birth School Metallica Death. “He got us kicking ourselves for not doing certain things sooner.”

“I wouldn’t be where I am today without [Bob’s] willingness to open my mind and push me into different singing styles and moods,” Hetfield said.

In addition to changing his writing and singing style, Hetfield also changed up his approach to lyrics. He abandoned songs about war, demons from the deep, and the apocalypse and replaced them with lines about internal struggles, psychological trauma, and perseverance in the face of adversity. And he delivered them with a new level of pathos and vulnerability. He even wrote a love song to his girlfriend Kristen Martinez, though he was initially reluctant to show “Nothing Else Matters” to his bandmates.

“It was so heartfelt, so personal to me,” Hetfield said in Enter Night. “I thought Metallica could only be these songs about destroying things, headbanging, bleeding for the crowd. I certainly did not think it was a Metallica song. When the guys heard it, they were amazed at how much they, I guess, related to it.”

They were also amazed to hear such sensitivity coming from the mouth of their stoic ringleader. “All I could think of at the time was, ‘James wrote a f—ing love letter to his girlfriend,” Hammett said in Birth School Metallica Death. “‘That’s just weird.’ James always wants to be perceived as this guy who is very confident and strong. And for him to write lyrics like that — showing a sensitive side — took a lot of balls.”

When Metallica emerged from the studio in 1991, disc in hand, it was clear they had gone above and beyond. They had reached inside themselves to summon new levels of creativity and musical expression and emerged with an album that spoke universal truths to metalheads and rock fans alike. With the album finished, the gears on the promotional machine started turning, and the band knew exactly what to do to generate mass hysteria.

Although they had only released one music video in their career — a conceptual piece for “One” — team Metallica knew how to work MTV. They hired director Wayne Isham (Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Janet Jackson, the Rolling Stones), and the veteran devised a stark, moody clip full of stroboscopic camera work, flailing hair, a wrinkly old man, and images of falling, drowning, praying, and fleeing. Combined, the images told the story of a boy plagued by nightmares. The video debuted two weeks before “The Black Album” came out and played a major role in spring boarding Metallica into regular rotation at both MTV and FM radio.

From there, the band returned to the zone in which it felt most comfortable: the live arena stage. Ten years of entrancing crowds with their power, energy, and precision had made Metallica an unstoppable concert act. From Hetfield’s brute, mechanical riffing and rousing interactions with the crowd to Hammett’s tasteful, articulate, and speedy solos, the band had no problem winning over crowds. To this day, rarely does one hear of a lackluster Metallica show. For the Wherever I may Roam Tour and Nowhere Else to Roam tour, Metallica played a combined 301 concerts over 23 months, and most of the sets lasted no less than three hours. For the concerts, Metallica constructed a lengthy, dynamic presentation that allowed old fans to view their new songs from a different perspective (even “Nothing Else Matters” sounded epic live) and exposed new recruits to the band’s vintage material.

And while the band was on the road, the Metallica machine kept the wheels greased and the public captivated by releasing four more music videos for the songs “The Unforgiven,” “Nothing Else Matters,” “Wherever I May Roam,” and “Sad But True.” Although there were mishaps during the touring cycle for “The Black Album” — including an infamous co-headlining concert with Guns N’ Roses in Montreal on Aug. 8, 1992 when Hetfield stepped too close to a piece of pyro and it went off, severely burning his arm — the bulk of the tour was immensely successful. By time the band wrapped up at the Werchter Festival in Belgium on July 4, 1993, Metallica was virtually a household name.

Rocky waters lay ahead. The band had trouble re-establishing its studio footing on 1996’s Load, 1997’s Reload, and especially 2003’s highly experimental and polarizing St. Anger. Even though they continued to draw huge crowds to stadium tours throughout these years, they were denounced by detractors as greedy rock stars or worse. It took until 2008’s Death Magnetic for many fans to make peace with their grievances and declare Metallica’s definitive comeback. But despite all the beef and bad blood (remember Napster?) that went down during the 17-year interim period, “The Black Album” remained a beacon of quality, and a symbol that Metallica could rise to great creative heights and perhaps one day transform the face of metal yet again.