I realize that this is Metallica's best selling, most remembered, and most revered album. However, there is a rather large group of individuals out there that kind of disagree with the prevailing opinion. I happen to be one of those people.

I remember like it was yesterday. It was late July, 1991 and myself a group of metal fans were absolutely elated when MTV (which was still a relevant station in 1991) announced that Metallica was going to release it's first video in many years at midnight on July 29th. I was quite young so it was not easy to convince my parents to let me go over to my friends's house past midnight to watch this with my pals. Believe it or not, we didn't actually like drinking or drugs so my parents were worried for no reason, but they had no reason to believe that was the case because every kid says that. In my case it just happened to be true.

Anyway, we were there, snacks in hand, counting the hours down before one of our favorite bands released their first track from their new album entitled "Enter Sandman." 12 midnight struck, the video started, and all of us were silent, taking in Metallica for the first time in 3 years.

We hated it.

i was no doubt, forced to go to sleep shortly thereafter

It wasn't that that song wasn't good or that the video was bad. The problem was that it wasn't Metallica. When I hear about people that love the black album, they more often than not, were not fans of the previous albums or even knew who Metallica was.

There is no doubt in my mind that from a business perspective, them toning down their music to suit a more mainstream audience made a WHOLE LOTTA sense from a money-making perspective as it sold more than 16 million copies in the USA alone which is more than the previous two albums combined. This was also the first time that Metallica had engaged an audience on a worldwide scale.

Previously they were one of the most popular metal bands, now they were one of the most popular bands period. Tours became massive money-makers and merchandising went through the roof. However, this came at a cost. Nearly everyone I know who was previously a Metallica fan no longer was. Why?

Well, we appreciated Metallica for being much harder than this. This was a watered down version of the Metallica that we had grown to love and appreciate. The biggest disappointment for myself and many others was it seems as though Lars Ulrich was replaced by someone else. Was he told to step it down 10 notches? He used to be awe inspiring but now he was boring.

Johnathan Gold from the Los Angeles Times said
While Metallica has embraced pop sensibilities quite well, the group is no longer in love with the possibilities of its sound

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I believe that this was sort of the beginning of the end for Metallica as well, they released album after album, each less memorable than the previous following the black album and ultimately hitting rock bottom with St. Anger, which is the worst album by them and perhaps anyone else too.

just seeing this makes me St. angry

They tried to make a comeback in 2016 with Hardwired....to Self-Destruct, but I think they were still being punished for St. Anger at that point because it sold even fewer copies than any of their previous 8 albums.

I'm certain a lot of this figure can be attributed to piracy, but if you were a fan over the years and disagree with me, i would be interested in hearing what you have to say. For me, and really any metal fan i knew in the 80's / 90's, the Black Album was a massive letdown.

review score intentionally withheld