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This album is simply mesmerizing.Stunning.

Pros:

*Quite simply,the greatest Metallica album of all time.

*The songs are AWESOME!Here's a quick take:

-"Enter Sandman":the biggest Metallica song.Listen to it and you'll know why.Hot Hammett solo.Scary rhythm guitars.

-"Sad But True":pure power stomp.The instruments are so powerful,that you might get disoriented when you turn on the volume to a high level!

-"Holier Than Thou":one word:AGGRESSIVE!You know what,make it two words:AGGRESSIVE AND POWERFUL!

Fast,furious,powerful,punishing,with hot solos.I don't know why I have this strong feeling that it's aimed at music critics.

-"The Unforgiven":a new kind of song for Metallica,since they used orchestral instruments for the first time,if I'm correctly informed.Heart-breaking song.Hammett's solo makes it even sadder.A great display of James' song-writing abilities.

-"Wherever I May Roam":an instant classic,this is one of Metallica's finest songs.Cool opening,excellent lyrics,burning solos(one of Hammett's hottest solos),this song is pure art.

-"Don't Tread on Me":not one of my favorites(yes,you guessed right:I still listen to this album every single day),but didn't Metallica have a different point of view about this issue in "...And Justice For All"?

-"Through The Never":powerful song.Excellent lyrics,cool guitars(especially James'),strong ending.This one song everyone will love.

-"Nothing Else Matters":is it just me,or is Metallica very close to writing a love song(I hope not!)?You'll know what I mean when you hear this song.James' voice was warm,the instruments were amazing(Michael Kamen,the maestro behind the current Metallica S&M album,worked with them on this song).

-"Of Wolf and Man":probably the most powerful Metallica song.It's the perfect Metallica song.The opening has to be the most powerful opening you'll ever hear.This is what this song is all about:pure power.

Great opening,great instruments,great lyrics,great vocals,great ending and great solos.Everything is great about this song.Sometimes,I find my self singing the four first guitars,and then continuing with the drums,by stomping the ground or by punching the noisiest thing around,like a table or something!That's how obsessed I am with this song.It's virtually that powerful.

-"My Friend of Misery":mediocre.

-"The Struggle Within":old-style-Metallica.

*Metallica changed their style to a better one.

Cons:

Musically,I can't think of anything.

Bottom line:unless you've been living under a rock for the last ten years,you already have this album,right?


Black Album   September 6, 2004
 50 out of 56 found this review helpful

Here we have Metallica's breakthrough album, the Black album. This is what put Metallica into the mainstream, and it is indeed a masterpeice. Every song on this on is a classic. The talent is all there. The production is crystal clear. Everything about this album is epic. A lot of people complain that this is all a little too mainstream, but I disagree. I believe the boys to be in top performance, just because it's a little more accessible, doesn't mean that the talent is gone. Kirk plays some of his greatest solos on this album. I believe that everyone is in top form. Jason Newsted also gets a chance to prove himself on this one. As a bassist, I believe his basslines on the slower songs to showcase his talent the most. He packs a lot of emotion, especially in Nothing Else Matters. Overall, this is just a fun and enjoyable cd with talented musicians and songwriting. Highly recommended!


Duped Again...   April 29, 2001
 35 out of 52 found this review helpful

Well, I guess it's true: If you market enough t-shirts and posters you can sell anything, and Metallica proved it with this sad step into the big-time mainstream sludge of accessibility.I realize that my opinion on this is unpopular, everyone under the age of 20 loves this album. Perhaps they missed the better days of Metallica when the band welded their complexity and stylistic integrity into the minds of an angry generation. Metallica, at one time, gave us a powerful and unstoppable sound that you could feel in your guts. Then they decided that they just wanted to sell records, and as cliche and stupidly rock-egoish as it may sound, I declare, ladies and gentlemen, this band SOLD-OUT! They are, in fact, quite the definition of selling out. Beginning with the obvious cheese gimmicks of their self-entitled album, such as deeming it the "Black" album and churning out accessible ballads and clean-cut radio-freindly productions, put this album up against any of the band's earlier releases, and you know what? It's not even the same band. They should have changed their name. With this "black" album we see a truly unique band (even among its metal contemperaries) turn into another slice of the same old stale bread, slowly contributing to the death of what so many of us love about music. Fifteen years old, and I'm off to the record store nine miles away with rolling electricity in my stomach. I've got a twenty dollar bill in my pocket that I somehow attained, and I'm imagining just how cool the new Metallica album is going to be. After seeing the "Enter Sandman" video on headbangers ball over and over, and weeks of anticipation, It's finally here! Man, I just couldn't wait.I remember finally getting to the record store, and in a grand display the dark cover of the album was plastered from wall to wall. I grabbed my copy, threw my wadded twenty on the counter and headed home. Having been a devoted Metallica fan for some time, I had an image in my head of what the album would be like. It's black cover and already magnificent reputation, however, began to seem misleading when I tore the CD open and began to read the lyrics. "shape-shift, run through the wind, move swift..."? What, are they saying they're werewolves or something? Oh well, it's Metallica! I'm sure it's cool. Of course it's cool... Arriving home, I quickly inserted the disc into my very early nineties CD player, skipped the first, already played out track "Sandman", turned the volume up to some obscene level, and began to experience one of life's bigger disappoinments. I tried, I really did, to love the album as much as I had loved "Puppets" and "Justice". But as the album went on there was just no hope for it. I mean, "Nothing Else Matters" sounded like it was a Cowardly Lion ("If I were king of the foreeeest") rip-off. "Don't Tread on Me" was as confusing lyricly as it was stale and boring musicly. "Of Wolf and Man" was just plain stupid, and "Holier Than Thou" sounded like another version of "Don't Tread...". My freinds called, and I told them the album was great. I lived in a complete state of denial for a few days, trying desparately to pry the awesomeness out of the album. I was sure that it just had to grow on me. Within a few weeks the CD had filtered its way into the corner of my room, dusty and scratched, ignored. I remember finding it there and finally admitting to myself "This album sucks...". Sometime later, I began to notice people at my school wearing Metallica t-shirts who shouldn't be wearing Metallica t-shirts. The kind of people who actually would wear that same Metallica t-shirt to a Metallica concert, declaring that they were fans and displaying their t-shirt like some kind of badge admitting them into the universe of cool. The kind of people who only a year earlier were blabbing on about how awesome Vanilla Ice was. It was around then that I began to understand what Metallica was doing. They were a sensation. They had manufactured, through ingenious marketing, what was perhaps what they always wanted...to be another slice of stale bread. It doesn't taste good, but it sells like mad as long as the package catches the eye of your run of the mill teen, scanning the landscape for some rebellious scrappings that will scare their parents and prop them up another rung on the ladder of image...which is exactly what this album did, and was.


Trash Metal   July 6, 2000
 22 out of 30 found this review helpful

To see people calling this Metallica's greatest album ever just goes to show how the fans changed along with the music.

To me, Metallica is two distinct bands, each developed or developing in their own way. First you had the original Metallica, which was mostly a speedmetal band. They evolved over the next few albums into something a lot more: The sound was original and distinct (especially Hetfield's rhythm guitar sound), and they seamlssly fused musical artistry with the aggression of thrash. Their crowning achievement was Master of Puppets, an album that has never been matched.

Then Metallica changed. They recorded the Black album, changed their sound, changed their approach, changed their attitudes. They went from being a successful metal band to being a popular metal band. The music was no longer epic- epic songs don't get much radio time. There was still speed (in some places), but it lacked a soul. The sound was still hard, but it was a spiritless, empty hard, devoid of the real guts that lifted their previous music to make it more than just a collection of riffs. Those who knew the old Metallica know better than to swallow this. It may sound like metal, but you don't have to have that edge the orginal Metallica had to play fast or loud. You just need a big amplifier. The new Metallica lacks the intangible qualities that the old one had, and except for the new pop music fans who listen to it, this is not the same band.

Any halfwit who's heard the music knows that Puppets was Metallica's best album, and by FAR better than anything they've done recently. Hearing people say that the Black album is the best just makes me want to puke.