Music Review by Bill Rendall

Black Album - Metallica

Heavy metal has steadily increased in popularity. Initially it was dismissed and ignored by music critics and the music industry. Radio airplay was rare. But while other offshoots of rock came and went, heavy metal just kept on going.

Metallica established themselves in the eighties playing heavy metal. They also played ballads influenced by Ennio Morricone's movie scores for Spaghetti Westerns. They were determined to do things their way in defiance of the music trends. Metallica explored extended song formats with varied time signatures when such things were shunned as being an indulgent excess of the seventies.

The Black Album released in the early nineties brought the band wide commercial success. It includes the classic tracks 'Enter Sandman', 'The Unforgiven' and 'Nothing Else Matters.' It also includes a sabre rattling song for the Gulf War era in 'Don't Tread on Me.' The song intro includes a few bars of 'America' from West Side Story to let us know that we shouldn't take the jingoistic lyrics too literally.

The lyrics to 'The God that Failed' are probably the most personal that James Hetfield has written. His mother was a devout Christian Scientist but her faith didn't save her from dying of cancer. Traditional medicine may have.

'My Friend of Misery' features a rare co-writing credit for Jason Newsted, the bass player. The bassline is prominent in this song and I think it is a shame that Newsted wasn't given more space for the bass on other songs.

I recommend the DVD of the concert Metallica performed with the San Francisco Symphony in 1999. Michael Kamen provided the orchestral arrangement. He previously provided the orchestration for 'Nothing Else Matters' from the Black Album. Metallica perform their songs pretty much the same way they do without the symphony. This doesn't give the symphony much space and at times the mix is overwhelming. Fortunately the DVD soundtrack has an option to listen to the band only, which is what I prefer for some of the songs.

One of the criticisms made of heavy metal is that it all sounds the same. Metallica has more variety in their music than most other metal bands. Every fan of heavy rock should have at least one Metallica album in their collection and the Black Album is their masterpiece.