The 500 - #255 - "The Black Album" - Metallica

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #255
Album Title: "The Black Album"
Artist: Metallica
Genre: Heavy Metal
Recorded: One on One Studios, Los Angeles, California U.S.A.
Released: August, 1991
My age at release: 26
How familiar was I with it before this week: Quite

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #235, moving up 20 spots since 2012
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Enter Sandman

Heavy metal music seemed custom built for parody, but not initially. The genre evolved out of the blues and psychedelic rock scene of the late sixties, with U.K. bands Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple being considered the pioneers -- a time when it was indelibly cool to be a rock star.

(l-r) Richie Blackmore (Deep Purple) Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath)
and Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin).

Through the seventies, shock rock bands, such as KISS and Alice Cooper, brought in an element of theatre, while Van Halen and Aerosmith introduced flashy guitar solos alongside lyrics celebrating beautiful girls and a non-stop party lifestyle. A new wave of British metal arrived late in that decade, with Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Saxon. Through them the "headbanger" fan was born. The genre became associated with toughness, power, aggression, and sometimes misogynistic machismo. Concurrently, the typical metalhead began to dress in studded leather and battered denim, replete with chain accessories -- a look popularized in the gay-biker and bondage subculture.

Rob Halford, frontman for Judas Priest, helped usher in
the leather aesthetic in heavy metal.

The eighties marked the arrival of glam metal (Mötley Crüe, RATT, Cinderella, Twisted Sister and Poison). The music was characterized by pop-influenced guitar riffs, upbeat rock anthems and the overly-sentimental and lyrically cheesy "power ballad". The musicians' stage attire borrowed heavily from the glam rock era of the seventies (David Bowie, T-Rex, Mott The Hoople). Some of the leather remained, but it transitioned from tough-guy black to bold neon yellow, red and blue, accented by skin-tight spandex. Long hair was back-combed and teased into high, voluminous manes, held in place by powerful, ozone-destroying quantities of aerosol sprays and gels. And then there was the make-up. Some bands used more stage cosmetics than the current cast of RuPaul's Drag Race. In a strange irony, the more you looked like a girl, the more girls you seemed to attract. It was a weird time indeed.

80s glam metal act, Poison.

Unsurprisingly, heavy metal was easy to ridicule. The American sketch comedy trio of Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer created the fictional English heavy metal band Spın̈al Tap in 1979, releasing the brilliant mockumentary This Is Spın̈al Tap five years later.

Shearer, McKean & Guest in a promotional poster for the 1984
This Is Spinal Tap film.

In a strange twist of life imitating art, the group went on to release three records, several videos and even tour dates, including their "reunion" Back From The Dead nine-city tour in 2001 and a "One Night Only" World Tour at Wembley Arena, London, on June 30, 2009. The opening act featured The Folksmen -- a parody folk trio comprising McKean, Shearer and Guest, characters who had been featured in the 2003 mockumentary A Mighty Wind.

McKean, Shearer and Guest as The Folksmen.

Meanwhile, across the pond in the U.K., four members of the television series The Comic Strip Presents... developed their own parody of the genre by creating the fictional heavy metal band Bad News. Two short films, Bad News and More Bad News, were released as satirical "fly-on-the-wall" style mockumentaries which purported to document the group's trials and tribulations as they tried to succeed in the British metal music scene of the mid-eighties. Actors Ade Edmondson, Nigel Planner, Rik Mayall and Peter Richardson brilliantly satirized the genre, playing hapless rockers, Vim Fuego, Den Dennis, Colin Grigson and Spider "Eight Legs" Webb.

Bad News were(l-r) Spider Webb, Den Dennis, Vim Fuego
and Colin Grigson

Somewhere in the greater Los Angeles area, in the midst of this weird period of gender-blending, headbanging rock and roll, a new band was being cast. As though instinctively, Metallica took their sound in a different direction. Their story began when 17-year-old Danish drummer Lars Ulrich moved with his family to Newport Beach, California, and placed an ad in a local trade magazine, reading. "Drummer looking for other metal musicians to jam..." Guitarists James Hetfield and Dave Mustaine answered the call and, in early 1982, the trio released their first original song, Hit The Lights.

Bassist Cliff Burton was added in 1983 and Mustaine was fired because of drugs and alcohol use. He was replaced by Kirk Hammett. Metallica's evolving sound was dubbed "thrash metal" – a term coined by music journalist Malcolm Dome in 1984. Metallica’s sound was characterized by fast, percussive beats, accented by aggressive, low-register guitar riffs. In many ways, it was a hybrid of late 70s heavy metal (before the glam make-up) and the punk and garage rock sounds of the mid-seventies.

The 1983 Metallica line-up, (l-r) Hammett, Hetfield, Ulrich & Burton.

The band released their first full-length record, Kill 'Em All, in 1983 and received critical acclaim, particularly from the writers in the British music magazine Kerrang. I was an avid reader, making the trip to a specialty magazine shop in downtown London, Ontario, every other week to pick up (or at least flip through) the latest edition. I discovered the title because I had become a fan of a lesser-known British progressive rock (prog-rock) band called Marillion, which American and Canadian media outlets ignored.

Marillion lead-singer Fish on the cover of
a 1982 Kerrang magazine I owned.

It was in Kerrang that I first saw an article on Metallica. It included a picture of the group gathered around a table strewn with booze bottles and food, mainly noodles, which they vulgarly displayed in their hands, mouth and nose (see below). 

One of the first pictures of Metallica I saw
in Kerrang Magazine (1983-ish).

As a fan of heavy metal, particularly the work of the pioneers (Sabbath, Zeppelin) and the 70s British wave (Maiden, Priest), one would think that Metallica would be right up my alley. However, upon seeing the article, I decided, without even hearing a track, that I didn't like the band. In fact, I had several conflicting thoughts:

• I recognized "Metallica" was arguably the best name a heavy metal band could have. It was perfectly brand specific and I immediately knew exactly what to expect -- a band that was unapologetically loud, raw and aggressive.
• I didn't like that picture -- I wasn't a prude, it just seemed unnecessarily vulgar and that they were trying too hard to shock.
• And finally, I realized, “those guys are just a little older than me."

It was this third thought that struck me the hardest. I was 18 in the summer of 1983. All of the bands I loved featured members 5-15 years older than I was -- which is a lifetime when you are a teenager. The members of Metallica could have been in high-school with me a couple years earlier.

Metallica in 1983, Burton, Ulrich, Hetfield & Hammett (l-r)
Looking a lot like my high school chums at the time.

Obviously, I've had 40 additional years to adjust to this reality, but it is jarring when you realize people your age (and younger) are creating music, like it or not, and you are goofing off and getting Cs in high-school chemistry.

Eventually, I became a casual Metallica fan when, in 1987, I worked with James Fast (still a good friend) at a pizza joint where he played heavy doses of Metallica in the kitchen while slinging late night pies from the 400℃ oven. I'll share more of that story when we get to Metallica's third album on The 500, Master of Puppets, at #167.

Me, making pizza in the Fluffy's restaurant where James & I worked.

This week's record, the self-titled "Metallica" from 1991, is often dubbed The Black Album. It highlighted the band's flexibility and creativity with their sound, much like they had a decade earlier. In 1981, they eschewed the pop-sensibilities of glam rock and leaned toward a heavier, “thrashier” sound. During 1991, they refined their style, slowing it down to create some of their most memorable songs, including Enter Sandman, Nothing Else Matters and Sad But True. This coincided with the arrival of grunge rock which quickly made the over-produced glam and pop rock of the eighties seem terribly out of date and completely out of touch with youth sensibilities.

Marvel Metallica Comic Cover

Metallica were, like me, approaching thirty in 1991 and, perhaps, recognized that creative stasis is often unsustainable in the music business. It was a wise choice, the record sold more than 17 million copies in the United States alone and is the fourth, longest charting record on the Billboard 200. It has also earned its spot here on The 500 at position #255.

Comic Jim Bruer performing his Metallica parody routine

All that said, Metallica were not immune to ridicule. In 2003, comedian Jim Bruer worked a terrific parody of Metallica’s sound into a stand-up routine that he bravely performed in front of the band’s members. His take-off included Bruer affecting a spot-on impersonation of Hetfield, imagining him singing nursery rhymes to his children, Metallica style. It can be viewed here.