The Black Album is the term usually used for the self-titled Metallica album from 1991. I don’t know why they chose to not give it a title. I think they should have come up with a kick-ass title to match the album. But that’s just me. If I were to guess, and have nothing to back up with, is that they were going for simplicity in contrast to the highly progressive …and Justice For All. And what could be more simplistic than just ignore giving the album a title.
I know there were som talkes back in the day about the cover art though. I’m pretty sure it was in good fun but Spinal Tap, you know the band that doesn’t really exist, but kind of does anyway, accused them of stealing their idea. If you’re familiar with the movie This is Spinal Tap you know that the cover art of the album “Smell the Glove” was deemed to be sexist and that the studio made a totally different cover – all black!
But in Metallica’s case, there actually are som art on it. It’s not just pitch black even if it is The Black Album. There’s som sort of snake in the corner and the cover actually spell out the bandname, which I guess could also be the album title.
But when The Black Album came out there were some controversy. There were basically two sides, those who thought it was the best album they ever made. And then there were the people accusing them for selling out. Later, when more albums were released, there were also two groups of people. The ones who thought The Black Album was their “first” album, and those who though it was their “last”.
I’ve always considered myself to belong to the latter group. For me, The Black Album is really good. It has some radio friendly songs and I think it really paved the way for making Metal a little more household. And it IS commercial. And it WAS a success! It’s one of the best selling Metal albums of all time, if not even the best. You can call it a sellout if you like but the fact remains. It was what people wanted.
But as I said, for me was The Black Album really good, but also a little more boring that the previous releases. The song structures are for sure simpler and there are ballads on it. Yes, I know that Fade to Black was on Ride the Lightning. But yet, this is different.
First there’s The Unforgiven, a song which they later made multiple other parts to. I don’t know how many. I think it’s a good song but I don’t think they needed to exploit it in absurdum. There’s also Nothing Else Matters which, along with Enter Sandman, is the most successful songs songs ever from Metallica. There are countless of covers from non-Metal artist and Elton JOhn called it one of the greatest song of all time at one times.
Generally, the tempo is not so high on The Black Album. I wouldn’t even call it Thrash Metal anymore. This is far away from the early Speed Metal days too. There are fast songs but they are sparse. For me, about half of them are really top notch, there are a couple that are ok, ans a couple that are pretty boring. Overall a great album no doubt but not masterful in my opinion. James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich is credited as creating all the music, Kirk Hammet has credits on about half of them and Jason Newsted got one credit. I’m pretty sure he would’ve deserved more, but what do I know? James wrote all the lyrics.
