“The music journalist narrative has long been that Nirvana finished off hair metal,” says Albert Mudrian, editor of American hard rock magazine Decibel. And then their tour with Guns N’ Roses really took them to a new audience and made it apparent that the two worlds – hard rock and metal – were now somehow acceptable to be merged together, whereas before that had never happened and was totally unacceptable… They became the ‘universal’ metal band.” “The promotion for the album – free, large-scale listening sessions, for instance – was unprecedented. “They were marketed extremely well,” says Stenning. The other reason The Black Album went interstellar was because Metallica’s record label, knowing they had a hit on their hands, put all their resources behind it. “When you take those kinds of good bones and add a different mood to it, you still can’t escape the best part – the songwriting.” “They are great songwriters, the songs have great melodies and progressions,” agrees Luciano. “Those two songs were on the Top 40 stations and that’s what we listened to at the time.”īut Metallica punctured the charts because they also understood song construction. “I never really heard them before ‘Enter Sandman’ and ‘Nothing Else Matters’ came out,” says Roxette’s Per Gessle. The new, more commercial Metallica would win fans far and wide. Bob fit right into the programme and the direction we were going.” “They don’t realise that no one screws with us, except us. “People will be saying Bob made Metallica sound like Bon Jovi,” Hetfield had predicted to Guitar World several months before The Black Album’s release. This was the early Nineties, after all, when the active pursuit of success and material wealth was regarded as the ultimate transgression. Inevitably there were accusations of “selling out”. Bob Rock’s shiny production was allied to songs crammed with melodies and hooks.
Out of this squall of conflict and misery emerged one of heavy rock’s most singular documents.
“Jason and Lars were too, and I think that has a lot to do with why The Black Album sounds the way it does.” I was trying to take those feelings of guilt and failure and channel them into the music, to get something positive out of it,” Hammett told Playboy several years later. “Lars, Jason and I were going through divorces. Adding to the turmoil was the fact three of Metallica were in the middle of unravelling marriages. One source of tension was Rock’s insistence on multiple takes. There were inevitable clashes as they gathered for sessions at One on One studios in North Hollywood and Little Mountain Sound Studios in Vancouver (Rock’s unofficial HQ, and the birthplace of Bon Jovi’s enormous 1986 record Slippery When Wet). Rock was a strong personality with a perfectionist streak, as were Metallica.