Metallica: What Went Wrong?

I've just had a look at the Academy's latest chart filtered for a minimum of ten votes (which currently returns 199 entries) and Metallica have three albums in the top twenty but also three of the bottom four too. So what the hell do fellow denizens of The Pit think went so badly wrong with Metallica?

Their career is a tale of two very different halves.  The first half has a real golden run of albums up to and including ...And Justice For All where they consistently improved and matured and you could hear it on each release.  As the youthful exuberance of the first two records began to fade come Master of Puppets they were able to distract us from this fact by simply writing great songs that made up for the loss of (some) of that raw energy.  They were of course very much a changed band come ...And Justice For All but yet again managed to put together one of my favourite thrash metal albums of all time.

I wouldn't say the black album was a bad record.  I actually really enjoyed it at the time and played it to death.  I mean it hasn't aged as well as the albums that came before it and there's no getting away from the fact that this was the start of their more commercial attempts for popularity.

The second half of their career (Load onwards) is just an embarrassment in comparison to their importance to not just thrash metal but metal music as a whole. One of the all time biggest and most blatant sell-outs in music history started in 1996 and is still ongoing some near 30 years later.  I don't actually think of them as thrash metal band anymore and that abomination they made with Lou Reed shows that their standards know no boundaries any longer.

Their fan base now is completely different to what is was in the 80's and the band are a shadow of their former selves, even though the record, ticket and merch sales probably would have them believe otherwise.  Had Cliff Burton lived I would like to think that they would have stayed on a much more thrash metal pathway, but I guess we will never know.  Don't get me wrong, it is absolutely every artist's right to make a conscious change in direction.  Equally it is every fan's right to decide whether that change is for them or not.  I can get by quite easily just simply not listening to their output beyond 1991 and (pretty much as I do with Slayer) I tend think they split up after that as far as I am concerned.

Despite not being a fan of Metallica (not right now anyway), I've known a bit of their biography by reading that section about them from the thrash metal chapter of Andrew O'Neill's History of Heavy Metal, and can understand what went right and wrong throughout their journey. Their debut Kill 'Em All was a rough yet acceptable start (as are many bands' debuts), but their next 3 albums formed the band's ultimate thrash trilogy, with Master of Puppets ruling the thrash community (well, ALMOST all of it... The blood still reigns for Slayer!). The band kept going after the tragic loss of their fallen bassist Cliff Burton to maintain the legacy of the band he wished would live on. However, their self-titled 5th album (also known as The Black Album) was a twist into the mainstream for the band when they discarded most of their thrash for a slower heavy metal style. This caused their reputation in the heavier metal community to plummet, while winning way more new fans than the earlier ones they lost. But their next 3 albums were a sad but true turn of events... Load took things in a more bluesy direction, while its counterpart Reload had more of a classic hard rock-inspired sound. Then the album that would make 6 years later was much worse... St. Anger showed the band falling victim to the nu metal movement and was considered by many to be one of the worst metal albums of all time. All in all, those 3 albums were so unlike what they've done in the past, and most of their fanbase has deserted them, despite the band staying in the global charts. Their two most recent albums Death Magnetic and Hardwired...to Self-Destruct resulted in the fanbase building back up, but just not the same as their first 5 albums.

Now here's something I've realized: After writing my review for Voivod's Angel Rat the other day, I noticed that they've taken a similar stylistic direction to Metallica. You can say that about a few other thrash bands, but this is especially true for Voivod! Their first two albums were a rough yet acceptable start, but their next 3 albums formed the band's ultimate thrash trilogy, though far more progressive than Metallica. However, Angel Rat was a twist into the mainstream for the band when they discarded all of their earlier thrash for a classic-ish progressive rock/metal sound. But their next 3 albums were an experimental turn of events that didn't fit right for the band, especially when a different vocalist took over in the second and third parts of that experimental trilogy. Their next hard rock-ish heavy metal trilogy showed a promising return to what they had before that experimentation, and after the passing of their guitarist Piggy, they finished off the second and third parts of that trilogy with his leftover demo guitar work. Of course, now we know that Voivod's thrashy progressive metal sound is back in business, but who knows what's in store for Metallica in the future? Maybe Metallica would fully return to their thrash metal sound for their next two or three albums, but I won't expect too much. Whichever sound a band decides on would be their next album's fate.

Anyway, it appears a couple other well-known albums like Anthrax's State of Euphoria and Judas Priest's British Steel are near the bottom of the 10+ chart list, even though there's nothing totally wrong with those albums from what I've known. Perhaps I can give those two albums each a review to hear for myself. More reviews coming, all!

Personally I feel that Metallica's downward spiral all started with the tragic passing of Cliff Burton. He was a bit older than the other members and seemed to be the solid foundation upon which the band was built, acting as a grounding influence on the other members - I believe he was a really laid back dude! Remember that most of Justice... was written before Cliff passed away and The Black Album, which is commonly viewed as the beginning of their downward spiral, was the first to be written without any of Cliff's input. His passing coinciding with a huge upswing in Metallica's popularity found Ulrich and Hetfield becoming a little detached from reality and I think they lost sight of why they started Metallica and became more intent on becoming rock stars - earning gold and platinum records and performing in front of immense, adoring crowds. This alienated a lot of their original fans, a situation that worsened when they took on Napster and made comments in the press apparently denigrating their own fanbase, turning more and more real metal fans against them. Seeing Lars Ulrich on TV proudly telling everybody about how he spent $7million on a Jackson Pollock painting and other bullshit didn't seem to help their standing with what is essentially a working class fanbase either. So basically what started as a bunch of supremely talented and energetic young men had their heads turned by fame and fortune and compromised their art in order to chase the adoration and financial rewards they so craved. Later still they have just become a sad joke - a band so lacking in integrity that most true metalheads would rather just ignore them. Fuck off and go play Glastonbury with Foo Fighters so we can all get on with listening to real metal you fucking sell-outs (sorry, but these guys really upset me thirty years ago).

The Metallica drop off in quality is actually quite easy to breakdown. They were once one of the most important bands during the 1980s during the rise of thrash metal, but eventually decided to ditch that and go for something that was more accessible with something that more resembled hard rock. S/T is one of the highest selling albums of all time... and longtime Metallica fans were pissed! Many metal fans scour when even the most mainstream of heavy bands attempt to expand their audience further. So imagine how the gatekeepers of thrash felt during the eighties felt; just before the boom of death and black metal.

The rest of the nineties consisted of meandering dreck that was devoid of character and felt like b-sides of the S/T album. For as awful as 2003's St.Anger was, at least it was different. At least the band took risks, and were unabashed with their ambition, and did not care about the backlash they received, as opposed to Death Magnetic; essentially fan service to those iconic thrash albums, and it did even worse! I really need to review that album because oh my god is it horrible!

After S/T, there was a dramatic divide between Metallica fans and to this day has not been sewn back together. Those who grew up with 90s/2000s era Metallica will say they have done nothing less than superior quality, while others will say that everything this band made was shit, while simultaneously purchasing every new Megadeth record. Metallica were heavily overhated during the 90s/early 2000s, justifiably so today, but for very different reasons than what the mainstream metal community would have you believe.

Firstly, I'd like to put forwards a fairly unpopular opinion in that I think Cliff was always the influence that saw Metallica pushing outside of the thrash metal spectrum so I don't see any reason why he would have kept them from experimenting. On the contrary, I think he would likely have helped in the expansion process & seen them achieving it much more successfully given his unquestionable taste.

Secondly, I think that the commercial success that Metallica experienced with "The Black Album" saw James & Lars losing their identity. They lost their focus & got caught up between their own artistic wants & needs & the pressure to match their past successes. Substance abuse certainly didn't help either. "The Black Album" was the perfect example of a band getting that balance right & I think the only reason that this was possible was because the band had both a point to prove & a genuine hunger for success. Once they achieved that success I think they suffered from a lack of any real understanding of what the next step was. They'd already achieved everything from a commercial point of view & (despite what the underground extreme metal scene may think) the world were telling them that they had creatively too. The "Load" & "Reload" fiascos were the direct result of this &, although I genuinely hate those records, at least they were pushing into new territory with the band being their own masters. 

"St. Anger" is very much the opposite of this as it sees Metallica consciously trying to appease the metal fans they'd lost with their previous couple of releases but at the same time attempting to conform to the current market tastes by heading in a more alternative metal style & dropping the guitar solos altogether. Such an obvious showcase of a band that's given up the ghost & are trying to copy the bands that they'd influenced is the ultimate sell-out in my opinion. But then, in trying to make up for that mistake by consciously (& poorly) plagiarizing their past glories with "Death Magnetic", Metallica showed a vulnerability & a weakness that only further compounded the issue & provided further proof that the band had completely lost touch with both their fanbase & reality. "Hardwired...to Self-Destruct" was probably the band's best record since "The Black Album" but it was so bloated, over-produced & self-indulgent that it did nothing to pull the band out of their creative hole, particularly given that the best material was once again centered around self-plagiarism. At least the band tried something different with "Lulu". As bad as it was, they certainly showed that they didn't give a fuck what anyone thought with that release.