They may also have thought it might be a good idea to start writing songs easier to pull off live that could be incorporated down the road into set lists that might be kinder to aging rock star bodies. Another theory is that Metallica simply got tired of writing, recording, and playing fast, complicated songs. Maybe Metallica thought that if a heavy song could get that kind of attention, something lighter might do even better.
Yet, why make the next album lighter, since “One” proved that a heavy Metallica song can be popular? Creating videos seemed to be the key, not diluting the sound.
One theory is that Metallica wanted to capitalize on and increase their momentum and, thus, The Black Album was constructed for maximum commercial potential. The video brought mainstream recognition, awards, and increased sales. In 1989 Metallica released their first music video, the video for “One”. Ironically, the bandwidth became heavy but narrow for a few years in the ’90s). Did Metallica sell out or did they just make a change for themselves that turned out to be right for the time? (As a side note, Nirvana and grunge caused a lot of rock bands like Kiss and Warrant to get heavier, and Metallica caused a lot of metal bands such as Testament and Megadeth to lighten up. The album was a huge success selling upwards of 20 million copies, bringing in hordes of new fans, and alienating some of the established fanbase that missed the complex sounds and fast tempos. Producer Bob Rock encouraged or helped the band to embrace a slicker sound, slow down the tempos, branch out more into singing, and cut down the shouting. Metallica (1991), more commonly called The Black Album because of the cover, their fifth album marks either the end of the first phase or the beginning of the second. One can argue that there are two-to-four sub-phases contained inside: for example, at one end of the Phase One sub-phase spectrum there is Kill ‘Em All and everything else, and at the other end each album forms its own sub-phase. Fans debate which album is the best, but they all agree these are the best albums. Phase One, the classic phase, showcases a band developing and refining their sound in the form of four albums: Kill ‘Em All (1983), Ride the Lightning (1984), Master of Puppets, (1986), and… And Justice for All (1988). However, there are three distinct aesthetic phases to Metallica’s studio album output.
Using Metallica and their studio albums as a test subject, what follows are some alternative ways to organize and analyze artistic output based on style, lineup changes, and producer.įans like to break Metallica’s career into two distinct halves: Before Metallica and After Metallica, with Metallica itself acting as a liminal state, some dividing line, The Great Wall of Metallica encompassing everything that came before and changing everything that came after. What we need is baseball’s equivalent of sabermetrics, an in-depth method of building, demarcating, sorting out, and understanding the larger narrative of a group. But like a baseball player’s batting average, singles and sales only tell part of the story.
When we try to organize a band’s output, we often look to singles or sales.