Metallica "Metallica (1991 Japan Edition, CD, Sony Records)"

Metallica (commonly known as The Black Album) is the fifth studio album by American heavy metal band Metallica. Released on August 12, 1991 by Elektra Records, it received widespread critical acclaim and became the band's best-selling album. Metallica produced five singles that are considered to be among the band's best-known songs, which include "Enter Sandman," "The Unforgiven," "Nothing Else Matters," "Wherever I May Roam," and "Sad but True." "Don't Tread on Me" was also issued to rock radio shortly after the album's release, but the song did not receive a commercial single release. The album marked a change in the band's sound from the thrash metal style of the previous four albums to a slower one. Metallica promoted the album with a series of tours. In 2003, the album was ranked number 252 on Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums of all time.

The recording of Metallica was troubled, as the band frequently entered conflicts with Bob Rock, the band's new producer, during production. The album debuted at number one in ten countries and spent four consecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard 200, making it Metallica's first album to top album charts. By February 2016, the album spent 363 weeks on the Billboard album chart, making it one of the ten longest running discs of all time. Metallica is one of the best-selling albums worldwide, and the best-selling albums in the United States since Nielsen SoundScan tracking began. The album was certified 16× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2012, and has sold over sixteen million copies in the United States, the first album in the SoundScan era to do so. Metallica played the album in its entirety during the 2012 European Black Album Tour.

At the time of Metallica's recording, the band's songs were written mainly by frontman James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, with Hetfield being the lyricist. The duo frequently composed together at Ulrich's house in Berkeley, California. Several song ideas and concepts were conceived by other members of the band, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Jason Newsted. For instance, Newsted wrote the main riff of "My Friend of Misery", which was originally intended to be an instrumental, one of which had been included on every previous Metallica album. The songs were written in two months in mid-1990; the ideas for some of them were originated during the Damaged Justice Tour. Metallica was impressed with Bob Rock's production work on Mötley Crüe's Dr. Feelgood (1989) and decided to hire him to work on their album. Initially, the band members were not interested in having Rock producing the album as well, but changed their minds. Ulrich said, "We felt that we still had our best record in us and Bob Rock could help us make it".

Four demos for the album were recorded on August 13, 1990; "Enter Sandman," "The Unforgiven," "Nothing Else Matters" and "Wherever I May Roam." The lead single "Enter Sandman" was the first song to be written and the last to receive lyrics. On October 4, 1990, a demo of "Sad but True" was recorded. In October 1990, Metallica entered One on One Recording Studios in Los Angeles, California, to record the album. The band also recorded the album at Little Mountain Sound Studios in Vancouver, British Columbia about a week. On June 2, 1991, a demo of "Holier Than Thou" was recorded. Hetfield stated about the recording: "What we really wanted was a live feel. In the past, Lars and I constructed the rhythm parts without Kirk and Jason. This time I wanted to try playing as a band unit in the studio. It lightens things up and you get more of a vibe."

Because it was Rock's first time producing a Metallica album, he had the band make the album in different ways; he asked them to record songs collaboratively rather than individually in separate locations. He also suggested recording tracks live and using harmonic vocals for Hetfield. Rock was expecting the production to be "easy" but had trouble working with the band, leading to frequent, engaged arguments with the band members over aspects of the album. Rock wanted Hetfield to write better lyrics and found his experience recording with Metallica disappointing. Since the band was perfectionist, Rock insisted they recorded as many takes as needed to get the sound they wanted. The album was remixed three times and cost US$1 million. The troubled production coincided with Ulrich, Hammett and Newsted divorcing their wives; Hammett said this influenced their playing because they were "trying to take those feeling of guilt and failure and channel them into the music, to get something positive out of it".

Rock altered Metallica's working schedule and routine so much that the members swore never to work with him again. The animosity and tension between Metallica and Rock was documented in A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica and Classic Albums: Metallica – Metallica, documentaries that explore the intense recording process that resulted in Metallica. Despite the controversies between the band and Rock, he continued to work with Metallica through the 2003 album St. Anger. After the production of St. Anger (2003), the fourth and final Metallica record Rock would produce, a petition signed by 1,500 fans was posted online in an attempt to encourage the band to prohibit Rock from producing Metallica albums, saying he had too much influence on the band's sound and musical direction. Rock said the petition hurt his children's feelings; he said, "sometimes, even with a great coach, a team keeps losing. You have to get new blood in there."

Metallica had much discussion about the album title; the members considered calling it Five or using the title of one of the songs, but eventually chose an eponym because they "wanted to keep it simple." The album's cover depicts the band's logo angled against the upper left corner and a coiled snake derived from the Gadsden flag in the bottom right corner. Both emblems are dark gray so they stand out against the black background, giving Metallica the nickname "The Black Album." These emblems also appear on the back cover of the album. The motto of the Gadsden flag, "Don't Tread on Me," is also the title of a song on the album. A folded, pageless booklet depicts the faces of the band's members against a black background. The lyrics and liner notes are also printed on a grey background. The cover is reminiscent of Spinal Tap's album Smell the Glove, which the band jokingly acknowledged in its documentary A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica. Members of Spinal Tap appeared on the film and asked Metallica about it, with Lars Ulrich commenting that British rock group Status Quo was the original inspiration as that band's Hello! album cover was also black.

Six tracks on Metallica were released as singles. "Enter Sandman" was released as the lead single on July 29, 1991; it reached number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The follow-up single, "Don't Tread on Me", was released promotionally and peaked at number 21 on the Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks singles chart. "The Unforgiven" was a Top 40 hit; it peaked in the Top 10 in Australia. In 1992, "Nothing Else Matters" was released to more success, reaching number six in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The fifth single from the album was also released in 1992; "Wherever I May Roam" peaked at number two on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart but was less successful on the Hot 100 chart, failing to reach the Top 80.[26] In 1993, "Sad but True" did not repeat the successes of the album's previous singles, charting for one week on the Billboard Hot 100 at 98. Almost all singles were accompanied by music videos; the Wayne Isham-directed "Enter Sandman" promotional film won an MTV Video Music Award for Best Rock Video at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards.

In 1991, for the fourth time, Metallica played as part of the Monsters of Rock festival tour. The last concert of the tour was held on September 28, 1991, at Tushino Airfield in Moscow; it was described as "the first free outdoor Western rock concert in Soviet history" and was attended by an estimated 150,000 to 500,000 people. Some unofficial estimates put the attendance as high as 1,600,000. The first tour directly intended to support the album, the Wherever We May Roam Tour, included a performance at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, at which Metallica performed a short set list, consisting of "Enter Sandman", "Sad but True" and "Nothing Else Matters", and Hetfield performed the Queen song "Stone Cold Crazy" with John Deacon, Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen and Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath. At one of the tour's first gigs the floor of the stage collapsed. The January 13 and 14, 1992, shows in San Diego were later released in the box set Live Shit: Binge & Purge, while the tour and the album were documented in the documentary A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica.

Metallica's Wherever We May Roam Tour also overlapped with Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion Tour. Hetfield suffered second and third degree burns to his arms, face, hands, and legs on August 8, 1992, during a Montreal show in the co-headlining Guns N' Roses/Metallica Stadium Tour. The tour included pyrotechnics, which were installed on-stage. Hetfield accidentally walked into a 12-foot (3.7 m) flame shot from a pyrotechnic during a live performance of the introduction of "Fade to Black". The show was cut short shortly after this accident, so that Guns N' Roses began their concert to malicious reactions from fans. Newsted said Hetfield's skin was "bubbling like on The Toxic Avenger". The tour recommenced on August 25 in Phoenix, and although Hetfield could sing, he could not play guitar for the remainder of the tour. Guitar technician John Marshall, who had previously filled in on rhythm guitar and was then playing in Metal Church, played guitar for the recovering Hetfield. Brazilian musician, Andreas Kisser from Sepultura was initially considered for play the tour, but Marshall finally was chosen.

The shows in Mexico City across February and March 1993 during the Nowhere Else to Roam tour were recorded, filmed and later also released as part of the band's first box set, which was released in November 1993 and titled Live Shit: Binge & Purge. The collection contained three live CDs, three home videos, and a book filled with riders and letters. Pressings of the box set since November 2002 includes two DVDs, the first one being filmed at San Diego on the Wherever We May Roam Tour, and the latter at Seattle on the Damaged Justice Tour. Binge & Purge was packaged as a cardboard box resembling that of a typical tour equipment transport box. The box set also featured a recreated copy of an access pass to the "Snakepit" part of the tour stage, as well as a cardboard drawing/airbrush stencil for the "Scary Guy" logo. The Mexico City shows were also the first time the band met future member Robert Trujillo, who was in Suicidal Tendencies at the time.

The final tour supporting the album, the Shit Hits the Sheds Tour, included a performance at Woodstock '94 that followed Nine Inch Nails and preceded Aerosmith on August 13 in front of a crowd of 350,000. Some songs, such as "Enter Sandman", "Nothing Else Matters" and "Sad but True", became permanent staples of Metallica's concert setlists during these and subsequent tours. Other songs though, such as "Holier Than Thou", "The God That Failed", "Through the Never", and "The Unforgiven" were no longer included in performances after 1995 and would not be played again until the 2000s, when Metallica, with Robert Trujillo on bass, began performing a more extensive back catalog of songs after Trujillo joined the band upon completion of the album St. Anger.

After touring duties for the album were finished, Metallica filed a lawsuit against Elektra Records, which tried to force the record label to terminate the band's contract and give the band ownership of their master recordings. The band based its claim on a section of the California Labor Code that allows employees to be released from a personal services contract after seven years. Metallica had sold 40 million copies worldwide upon the filing of the suit. Metallica had been signed to the label for over a decade but was still operating under the terms of its original 1984 contract, which provided a relatively low 14% royalty rate. The band members said they were taking the action because they were ambivalent about Robert Morgado's refusal to give them another record deal along with Bob Krasnow, who retired from his job at the label shortly afterwards. Elektra responded by counter-suing the band, but in December 1994, Warner Music Group United States chairman Doug Morris offered Metallica a lucrative new deal in exchange for dropping the suit, which was reported to be even more generous than the earlier Krasnow deal. In January 1995, both parties settled out of court with a non-disclosure agreement. Metallica played the album in its entirety during the 2012 European Black Album Tour.

Metallica was voted the eighth best album of the year in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll for 1991. Melody Maker ranked it number 16 in its December 1991 list of the year's best albums. In 1992, the album won a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance. In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked Metallica number 252 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time and 25th on their 2017 list of "100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time". Spin ranked it number 52 in its 1999 list of the "90 Greatest Albums of the '90s" and said, "this record's diamond-tipped tuneage stripped the band's melancholy guitar excess down to melodic, radio-ready bullets and ballads". It was included in Q magazine's August 2000 list of the "Best Metal Albums of All Time"; the magazine said the album "transformed them from cult metal heroes into global superstars, bringing a little refinement to their undoubted power".

Track listing

All lyrics are written by James Hetfield.

1. "Enter Sandman" Kirk Hammett/Lars Ulrich/Hetfield 5:34
2. "Sad but True" Ulrich/Hetfield 5:24
3. "Holier Than Thou" Hetfield/Ulrich 3:48
4. "The Unforgiven" Hammett/Ulrich/Hetfield 6:26
5. "Wherever I May Roam" Ulrich/Hetfield 6:44
6. "Don't Tread on Me" Ulrich/Hetfield 4:01
7. "Through the Never" Hammett/Hetfield/Ulrich 4:03
8. "Nothing Else Matters" Hetfield/Ulrich 6:30
9. "Of Wolf and Man" Hammett/Ulrich/Hetfield 4:17
10. "The God That Failed" Ulrich/Hetfield 5:09
11. "My Friend of Misery" Jason Newsted/Hetfield/Ulrich 6:48
12. "The Struggle Within" Hetfield/Ulrich 3:56
13. "So What (Anti-Nowhere League cover)"  03:08

Total length: 62:40

Catalog number appears with "9" on the spines, on the CD itself without "9" 

A.k.a. "The Black Album". The album cover is simple with the logo on the upper left hand corner and a snake on the bottom right hand corner. The reason for this cover is basically for people to just get into the music without examining what the symbolism behind the cover represents. Metallica just wanted people to appreciate the music, not the CD contents.

This album introduced a significant change in Metallica sound, losing most of the thrash element which defined the band's previous output and replacing the complex structures with a more streamlined, accessible approach.

Michael Kamen composed the symphonic parts in "Nothing Else Matters".

Video clips were made for "Enter Sandman", "Sad but True", "The Unforgiven", "Wherever I May Roam", and "Nothing Else Matters". 

A "Classic Albums" documentary has been made for "The Black Album", chronicling its inception, recording process and legacy. It includes several anecdotes and reconstructions pertaining to the songs included (or not) on the album.

Recording information:

Recorded from October, 1990 to June, 1991 at One On One Recording in Los Angeles, California.