Metallica (studio album)
by Metallica

This album feels uneven. Not in the sense that the songs don’t fit together, because they definitely do. It’s more that the good songs are good, and the weaker ones are just painfully average. Nothing’s outright terrible, except maybe the drum sound, which really doesn’t sit right on a few tracks, especially Sad But True.

But the real issue is length. The songs are too long, there are too many of them, and the fillers all blur together. The standouts do shine, Enter Sandman is excellent, but there aren’t enough of them to make me want to come back to the record.

In the end, nothing completely fails; there’s always a baseline of quality. But it’s repetitive, it drags, and I lose interest quickly. It just lacks surprise.

Metallica transition to heavy metal here, but thankfully their thrash past makes its presence felt and the band is still pretty edgy and the playing is still great. Wonderful guitar riffs and solos, and some very good songs. They made metal and thrash accessible to a rock audience, and consequently the album sold well, even if it isn't quite as interesting as their previous albums.
Best: "Holier Than Thou" as it's a bit edgier than the rest.

Regardless of your opinion or your ranking of this album off Metallica's albums...you can't deny how HUGE this album was for the band and metal and how it took them and the genre into a whole other stratosphere.

It just achieved the amazing feat of going 2x Diamond (20x Platinum) in America and has been on the US Billboard 200 albums chart for a total of 790 weeks.

This has always been and always be Metallica’s Magnum Opus and the gold standard in which Metallica albums will always be compared to.

Yes, it is very polished sounding, yes it was all over radio and MTV, yes it sold millions of copies and yes the album made Metallica into a massive mainstream juggernaut…but that doesn’t make the album any less amazing than it already is.

This was Metallica at the peak of their powers and this album should at least be ranked #1 in their overall discography and in the Top 100 Albums Of All Time on this site.

Bought the vinyl recently, fantastic.

Not a bad album, but there are couple of filler tracks and it lacks the lyricism and energy from their previous records.

Probably their best album. ??Drummer pulls

From Jboy56 03/05/2022 12:09 | #282325

Five Classic METAL songs, 2 good, and 5 very mediocre Metallica songs.

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From djrodo 04/20/2021 17:18 | #268796

The perfect trash metal album and the most complete from Metallica. Every track is really good....