In stylistic terms, "Metallic" is about diversity, "Justice," and to a lesser extent the
1986 breakthrough album "Master of Puppets," connected one song to another with
related themes and riff structures; these were unified works, almost thrash-metal
concept albums. Each of the twelve songs on "Metallica" stands on its own. The
multipart musical structures that paced the much longer compositions on "Justice"
haven't been abandoned, but the forms have been telescoped into songs in the
four-to-six minute range. Whenever a passing musical moment reaches out and
grabs you, it's a pretty safe bet that you won't be hearing it again until the next
time you play the album.
Several songs on "Metallica" seem destined to become hard-rock classics.
"Wherever I May Roam" blossoms from a sitarlike opening into a stomping but
lyrical power-chord rocker, with Jason Newsted's chordal bass voiced with the guitars
to provide that unmistakable Metallica crunch. When Hetfield sings, "My body lie,
but still I roam." he echoes, perhaps unconsciously, one of bluesman Robert
Johnson's most indelible images. Structurally diverse but containing a
transcendently melancholy and melodic chorus, the song sounds like an anthem in
the making, but an anthem kept to a human scale. "The Unforgiven," "My Friend of
Misery" and "Sad but True" seem likely to have a comparable staying power. And
Metallica doesn't neglect the head bangers, the group's original constituency.
"Through the Never," "Of Wolf and Man," and "The Struggle Within" are hard-edged
and hard driving, and even the prettiest songs forgo any hint of radio-ready
sweetening.
My Rating: 10
Track list & Lyrics
Fan-voting of album's best song
Cover Art
My notes/review:
This is just a spectacular album. Out of all Metallica albums, it is the one with the highest sales for a good reason. Though you could easily argue that Ride the Lightning or Master of Puppets is the best Metallica Album, most people would agree that this is their best. When an album contains great songs such as "Enter Sandman", "The Unforgiven", "Sad But True", and "Nothing Else Matters", its hard to argue. The truth is that there is not one bad song on this album. A must have for any Metallica fan!
From Rolling Stone:
The first few bars of the opening cut, "Enter Sandman," tell the tale. The song
begins with the fade-in of a chugging guitar riff. As the riff rises to full volume,
ushering in the rhythm section, an entirely different guitar texture, sounding like a
phased, finger-picked, electric twelve-string, comes in under and behind the
primary riff. All this subtlety draws the listener in, focusing attention. When
Drummer Lars Ulrich enters, the whack of his first snaredrum accent seems to jump
right out of the record and into the middle of the room. By the time you're half a
minute into "Metallica," musicianship, arrangements and engineering are working
hand in hand to define the parameters of a sonic space that the entire disc will
claim as its field of interaction.