The opening strains of "Until it Sleeps," with its dreamy tones and slithery leads could easily have been picked up of Nirvana's cutting room floor and the tempo rarely rises above "unhurried woman picking vegetables at the grocery store." Still, for what it is-a rock album-it's actually pretty damn good. If you are one of the people who think (incorrectly) that grunge killed metal, then you probably hate this album. A killer start but far from essential listening and the last "classic" album I would recommend to a newbie. For all it's ripping qualities, it's still dripping with NWOBHM tendencies, from the riffs (See: "Hit the Lights") to Hetfield's not-quite-yet-Hetfield vocals. It's historically significant, and for a debut this is a damn good album. Brimming with enthusiasm but a little clueless. It's a total mess but at least it's interesting, which is more than I can say for Death Magnetic. It's the sound of men who never had to grow up suddenly confronted with their own imploding egos. But if you've seen Some Kind of Monster, you know that this wasn't some deliberate attempt at aping something more commercially viable. It sounds terrible, and not in a super kvlt black metal sort of way, and the songs themselves are mostly cringe-worthy dad takes on the aggro metal of the early 2000s. There are a lot of reasons to dislike this album. Train wrecks can at least be fascinating. Give me the Emperor Hetfield suing fans to the sound of a 300-man orchestra. It's a pure fan service from a band who, whatever you want to say about them post- Black Album, had gotten really good at pissing people off. It's perfectly well-produced, it's thrash-y-ish, and hey, Kirk is soloing again! But that was kind of all there was to it. The southern rock influences are just too much here, dragging whatever merit remains into the realm of strip club intro jams. This is what Pantera might have sounded like if they had stuck together for another 10 years and started doing Ford commercials. Whatever fine line Load had managed to walk, Re-Load tripped over and barfed on itself. Spin magazine ranked Metallica number 52 in a 1999 list of the '90 Greatest Albums of the 90s' and stated, 'this records diamond-tipped tuneage stripped the bands melancholy. Otherwise known as the Metallica Switches From Beer to SoCo album. In 2003, the album was ranked number 252 on their list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (another Metallica album, 1986s Master of Puppets, had a higher ranking). But mom is still mom, hence, Load might have crept up a little higher than a few might agree with. This was my world view until I discovered the comment sections and started getting called horrible names like "wenis." Discovering Metallica's thrash past was like learning my mom used to own a speedboat and kill people for money or nosebleed Styx tickets. I grew up in Israel and didn't have proper access to the internet or music media until well into high school so as far as I knew, Metallica was just a button down, margarita sipping' rock band. Load was my first cassette and I bought it (or had my mom buy it for me) because it had flame-looking things on the cassette case and I was 10. Speaking of which….Metallica was the first band I really listened to on my own. But the leap in evolution is minimal at best and Master did it first.
What do you do when you when you make one of the best metal albums of all time? You try to make it again, but without one of the best bassists of all time (RIP Cliff). Am I freaking out over nothing? Maybe but these are three stone classics we're ranking here so we're going to have to go by the minutia. In a different universe, Metallica sat down together to discuss the track listing for Ride the Lightning and decided that "Fight Fire With Fire" was a good song but maybe a little boring and not the best way to suck people in for the long haul, and that maybe "For Whom the Bell Tolls" was the epic shit-your-pants moment they were looking for. Let this be a lesson in the art of album openers.
Can't you just see the band rocking the fuck out to "Sad But True" in a smoky rehearsal room, throwing each other shit eating grins between verses? It just flat out jams. They made the music they wanted to make and it happened to fill a void and it also happened to totally rule. Even people generous expectations for this album's probably didn't see it going 16x Platinum and becoming one of the best selling albums of the last 30 years. In fact it's amazing their brains were even still functioning in 1991. But look, Metallica are not rocket scientists who meticulously tweaked crafted every note on this album for maximum profit.
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