ALBUMMER! 19: Metallica, the Black Album

Show good!!!!!!!!

Oh man, this album was a HUGE deal in our little world back then. Can't wait to watch this.

Fuck LAPD

No... not the Black album.... you can't make me! Not again!

My general approach with Metallica is No Cliff No Sale, but Jason absolutely should have gotten his due.

This does not apply to Harm's Way. They fucking rule.

...And Justice for all was the last good Metallica album

That was fun.

I always feel out of my purview when Metallica talk happens because I didn't listen to them until Load.

But anyway, no wonder Drew was handcuffed.

I think this is a good show. Also, video games are good. I'm allowed to like more than one thing, officer!

You cant deflect by saying "oh the first song is about bedtime" as it pertains to how serious people should take the lyrics when the reality is that James wrote a reference to crib death and Bob Rock told him to change it. It might not have been the intention of the band, but James 100 percent wanted people to think of him as a bit more intelligent than the average rock/metal guy, and that is 100 percent shown later in his career with St Anger. All that shit like "my lifestyle determines my deathstyle" and the whole concept of there being a "Saint Of Anger" reeks of a metal guy trying too hard to be poetic and "intelligent" imo.

What is Jordan wearing? It looks like a NASCAR cap and I should know because I'm from Arkansas.

This episode Bob Rocked.

I might be just ripping episodes of Todd In The Shadows' Trainwreckords series, but I wonder what them listening to Liz Phair's "Funstyle" would do to them.

I thought people liked the Black Album

They do, because it's a great album.

It was everything after that kinda crap, and well that and metallica sticking around so long they became such a dad-rock band.

I wish Hipster S. Thompson had more legitimate critique instead of "I don't like it because it's bad because I don't like it" and didn't try to lean so hard on failed bits the whole time. In stark contrast, Bo made a lot of thoughtful, researched points that lead to actual discussion amongst the rest of the group.

@ghostfish: legit lol at Hipster S. Thompson

as a self-professed (although not professional) metalhead and purveyor of all shapes and sizes of metal, from powerviolence to blackened death metal to grindcore to post hardcore and everything in-between, i feel comfortable saying:

i never need to listen to metallica again, and really, you don't either. lars has enough money. go listen to anaal nathrakh, or discordance axis, or neurosis, or hell, give archspire a listen. those boys have fun.

explore a little, get your feet wet, enjoy the appetizers.

This was a huge album for me when I was a teenager, I’ll go back to a couple of songs here and there but don’t think I could do a full listen again.

Drew was in full-on MJF-mode this episode.

Drew was right

yeah, I don't listen to Metal music outside of a few bands (Black Sabbath, Isis even then that is seldom) but it's odd because this show is usually random shitty albums no one cares about. I've hardly listened to Metallica but the self-titled is usually considered a good record.

It just occurred to me that I don't own a gray & black plaid shirt. I need to get on that.

Drew is funny but he needs to be more critical and specific. Just insisting that you think something is bad because it's bad doesn't really cut it and it's a conversational dead end.

And that's why he was handcuffed, the system was trying to SILENCE HIM!

In all seriousness though, historically I've always liked the Black album and thought it was great, but it also occurred to me that I had only ever heard it in pieces, listening to its tracks here and there, and never just sitting down and trying to listen to it from end-to-end in one sitting. It was in doing this (in preparation for this episode) I understood what Jeremy was saying about it being kind of a slog. There are multiple tracks on this album flirting with the 7-minute mark. If you like thrash and are used to killer back-to-back 2.5 minute ass blasters, I can see how someone wouldn't like this album. I agree with Jordan most closely though, as a guitar player of 15+ years who started in my early teens, the riffs on this album are just fantastic. Idk if I'd say they're Metallica's best, but there's such a variety of rad, dynamic, cool-sounding riffs that I always wanted to learn. The first time you learn how to play Enter sandman's main riff is basically a coming of age moment where you graduate from being a little stinker into a full grown big stinker that nobody wants to listen to.

oh man, I took a History of Rock Music course in college to hit a history requirement and the professor was an extremely old bitter racist woman who admittedly knew a lot about the industry and had some very interesting stories. the funniest part of the class was getting to the 90s and listening to her rant for an entire class about how Metallica sold out and betrayed their fans with this "pop" album. judging by the hands-on nature of the rest of her stories I think it was personal to her, not just a fan thing

MJF: Michael Jackson Forever.

please make this your lower third/intro for the next episode, holy shit

@diet_hellboy: nope, Maxwell J. Friedman

Can I add Of Wolf And Man to the shape-shifting wiki page?

https://www.giantbomb.com/shape-shifting/3015-570/

I've been a metalhead for over 25 years, and have played various styles of metal guitar for 20 years.

I have never heard this album front to back.

This came out when I was a teenager. My friends and I went to MSG to the "listening party" where they debuted the album. We wanted the next level of thrash from our heroes. We got mid-tempo metal. We were aggrieved. I think that's the general reasoning behind why most fans didn't like it, but honestly that's on us. Bands are allowed to evolve, fans don't have to go with them.

Don't Tread On Me is nigh unforgivable. You can't go from a song based on Johnny Got His Gun to run of the mill patriotic platitudes and remain credible. To secure peace is to prepare for war? No thanks. To present both sides of the coin is admitting you are fine either way, and if so, why write songs about something you don't actually care about? Because it's a safe and commercial choice.

This was the best episode yet. I liked the contrast of Bo loving it and Drew hating it and everyone else in the middle. I'd like to see more episodes about albums that are not just shite.

I'm good for maybe three Metallica songs a year and I passed that mark a long time ago.

a pedophile i talked to on AIM when i was 12 dedicated nothing else matters to me :)

@quietcold: UHHHHHHHHHHH

@nd3141 said:

I've only engaged with Metallica by proxy and osmosis (because I personally can't stand them) but if I were a fan and cared about Justice's message and then that song came out, I would could see myself becoming a hater of this album for that alone. And I'm glad they brought it up.

BUT, the more I dig in, I'm coming around to the argument that they have always been head empty flakes and Don't Tread on Me was just the proof. According to this Rolling Stone article from 1991, they basically said Lars and James would watch CNN and go "ooh that's a political issue, let's write a song" for Justice. That doesn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence in their approach to politics.

And then there's this whole bit that spells it out:

Critics who praised Hetfield for his unflinching psychological portrayal of the horribly maimed war veteran in “One” have turned around and nailed him for the alleged feel-good Yankee patriotism and crass post-gulf-war flag-waving of “Don’t Tread on Me.”

The band has been baffled by the reaction. “We got people calling us jingoistic – that was definitely a word we had to look up,” Hammett says, laughing. Hetfield actually wrote the song in August 1990, before the invasion of Kuwait, and the flag at issue is not the Stars and Stripes but the coiled-snake banner with the legend DON’T TREAD ON ME carried by Culpeper’s Minutemen of Virginia during the revolutionary war. A replica of the flag was hung in the studios for the length of the Metallica sessions, and the snake itself appears on the album cover.

Frankly, if Hetfield is guilty of anything, it’s woefully bad timing and a muddied point of view. He contends that “Don’t Tread on Me” is really a reaction to what he now feels was the overzealous anti-American tone of Justice.

These dorks hoisting the don't tread on me flag in the studio during The Black Album and being baffled at the negative connotation is maybe who these guys have always been. Or maybe the riches really did just warp their brains in the all-too-expected way.

@quietcold: At least it wasn't "Unforgiven 2"

I have nothing to contribute here other than to say that I am a man named Elijah.

It was my first metal album. No sneer quotes needed. It was perfectly compatible with my 9-year-old brain. I liked it more than the older stuff at the time (it was the production), but they lost me entirely at LOAD in '96. But that was when I found Pantera and my appreciation for metal changed for the better. It was an effective gateway album.

https://www.facebook.com/HarmsWayRunningManToVariousSongs/videos/278215570030890/

Unrelated to the Black Album but worth sharing with Bo on the show

I listened to and ranked all of Metallica's songs last spring (because I'm a compulsive music ranker, I guess), and the black album came in at #5 in the ranking by average song position. I would say the gap between it and #4 (Kill Em All) is much shorter than the gap between it and #6 (Death Magnetic). To Bo's point, I really tried my best to not hold how overplayed certain songs are against them, but I do find "Nothing Else Matters" and "The Unforgiven" to be really plodding at times.

I'm a little bummed no one designated "The God That Failed" as their favorite, or that they discussed it beyond the reason it was written. Not only is it one of the heavier songs in their catalogue (along with my absolute favorite, "Dyers Eve"), but it feels like the exception to their mushbrained songwriting rule. Putting it on their most commercially-focused album to date is also a move that looks uncharacteristically bold in hindsight. It and "Enter Sandman" are the two songs I absolutely never get tired of on this album.

Great guest and great episode!