Metallica's Metallica

33⅓ Main Series #108

by David Masciotra

In 1991, Metallica released their fifth studio album that would become known and beloved around the world as "The Black Album.†? Since its release, it has sold 30 million copies, and become a towering monument in the pantheon of rock's greatest records. Readers will get unprecedented insight into the story behind an iconic album from one of the world's most iconic bands through interviews with James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, Jason Newsted, and "Black Album†? producer Bob Rock. Masciotra takes readers into the recording studio, giving them Metallica's account of how their most successful and famous record was born and learned to walk into every radio station and stadium stage around the world. Masciotra not only talks to the band about the making of the album, but also the stories that inspired the songs. Readers will not only learn about "The Black Album,†? but they will also gain greater knowledge and familiarity with the men who created it. With direct access to the band, Masciotra offers a fascinating and inspiring account of the creation of one of music's best and best-selling albums.

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction

128 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 24, 2015

About the author

David Masciotra is the author of the forthcoming, "Exurbia Now: The Battleground for American Democracy" (Melville House Books), and "I am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters" (Bloomsbury, 2020). His previous books are "Working On a Dream: The Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen" (Bloomsbury, 2010), "Mellencamp: American Troubadour" (University Press of Kentucky, 2015), "Metallica by Metallica" (a 33 1/3 from Bloomsbury, 2015), and "Barack Obama: Invisible Man" (Eyewear Publishing, 2017).

He writes regularly The New Republic, Washington Monthly, the Progressive, CrimeReads, and many other publications on politics, music, and literature.

He lives in Indiana, where he teaches literature and writing courses at Indiana University Northwest. For more information visit www.davidmasciotra.com.

Hello Grace and Jenna!

Reviews

[Paul Gleason · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected a lot more insight, especially considering that the author had access to and interviewed the four guys who made METALLICA. There's really nothing new here that the band has to offer.

Another problem is that the book reads like a hagiography. There's a way for a writer to show enthusiasm for a work of art without relying so heavily on adjectives like "master," "genius," etc. The author even makes claims, such as "Hetfield is metal's best lyricist," as if they're fact and not open to debate. He makes outlandish claims likes this throughout the book. Mailer's Harlot's Ghost is a "genius novel"? What does that make The Naked and the Dead? The best novel ever written?

The author needs to learn the difference between showing and telling. In other words, please support your claims. You need to prove that Hetfield is the best lyricist. I know this is an impossible claim to prove, so please don't make it. Say "one of the best." My students know how to do this...

This relentless hagiography makes the book seem kind of silly and not worth your time.

[Sam]

This is an astonishingly badly written book. The writing is a swamp of metaphor so dense it's hard the see the light. It's completely overwritten. Where's the editor? Where's the sense of decency?

The writing is so bad, and so over-the-top, any details about the events, themselves (the writing, recording and release of Metallica's seminal 'black album') get lost. It's less a book and more a gloryhole of meaningless words.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

During my early teenage years in Canada, there was one guy in my class who announced that Metallica's Black Album was the best thing he's ever heard and when our classmates (of both sexes, metal isn't an exclusively male thing y'know) asked him to copy it he would do so and they would agree tat it was great. I shunned all metal so I pushed out of my radar.

Every time I pick a 33 1/3 volume I make sure to listen to the album a couple of times. Thanks to the internet this has become easier so to tell the truth I played Metallica's self-titled fifth album for the first time last week and I liked it! In fact it's pretty catchy for a metal album.

Masciotra's book about the black album is a classic 33 1/3 book: The reader gets a brief band history and then an analysis of the album tracks. Here Masciotra portrays the band as one that wanted to break away from the genre they were lumped with and the black album facilitated that: they roped in a big name producer who pushed the band and introduced new recording techniques to them, Hetfield became a better vocalist and Kirk Hammett , Jason Newstead and Lars Ulrich were able to experiment with other styles.

This volume is a great read, and to a certain extent it is fun as well

[Jacqueline Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well I really enjoyed this book, not sure on the story flow or the way it's written but liked the song snippets, insights and stories of how the black album came to be.
My new boyfriend asked me to get black album for him, on the day it came out. I marched past the queue in hmv to ask for it, not realising the queue was for it, I told the man it can't be it's heavy metal 🤣
Well, I don't like heavy metal... I was listening to Spandau Ballet at the time, but bloody hell, that album changed everthing. 30 years later my husband and I have never listened to one album so much.
I don't consider myself a true Meticalla fan, I only dabble in their other albums but I am a black album fanatic 🖤

[Brad · Rating 2 out of 5]

"'Sad But True' fires with the heaviest of artillery, terminating any faint of heart as collateral damage." (39)

If you rolled your eyes at this sentence, you will roll your eyes through this entire book like I did. Written like marketing copy directed at 14-year-old boys, this book's only purpose seems to be praising the album it focuses on. There is no deep analysis, no stunning revelations, no piercing interviews. A reader with more than a passing familiarity with the band--namely, nearly anyone inspired to read this book--will not learn much of anything new.

I'll leave you with this tidbit:
"When an interviewer asked him, 'What's the next frontier?' Ulrich said, 'There aren't any left, at least on this planet. We'd have to do [tour] space.' An intergalactic tour seems far-fetched, but Metallica is full of surprises." (108)

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

The musical comparisons with Camus weren't great. Found a lot of it to be repetitive which shouldn't be a concern in such a short work. Most of the insight came from the band themselves rather than the author. Masciotra is another apologist for the "black album" and everything that came after. Masciotra admits the first four albums were incredible so why should Metallica keep repeating that . . . maybe because they were incredible?

[Nathan · Rating 1 out of 5]

About the only thing good that came from this book, in my opinion, was I went back and listened to Metallica for the first time since I was a teenager...at least purposefully. Other than that, the book didn't really seem to have a lot of focus, and sort of seemed to run out of energy about halfway through the book.

[Brad Tilbe · Rating 1 out of 5]

terrible - not the subject matter but the author and his use of the same words/descriptions
soul groove for example

[Manuel Chavarria · Rating 2 out of 5]

A decent breakdown of the The Black Album wrapped in some of the most irritating prose you'll ever read.

[Topher · Rating 2 out of 5]

This skinny book did a good job with some insightful vignettes about the musical vision intended for the black album and the origin stories of some of the songs. In particular the discussions of how isolated riffs were pieced together into songs, and the primal basis for the lyrics of most of the tracks being inspired by the broadening of James Hetfield's mind through spiritual and philosophical works, were fascinating even to someone well-grounded in Metallica lore.

The impact of the album on the worlds of metal and wider music culture was discussed if from a high level, but I thought the book might have done well to discuss some other cultural factors and historical anecdotes in more detail, such as the ill-fated Guns 'N Metallica tour (not mentioned at all) which inadvertently showcased the discipline of Metallica as performing musicians vis a vis the quintessential hair-metal club band that never really grew into professionals, or the departure of Jason Newsted which gets but a sentence but could have been leveraged to discuss all sorts of intra-band frictions.

[Robbie Shepherd · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads like a college essay that was 30 pages long but with extra commas and repetition became 110. Next time just “1.5 space” it, ok? You’ll still kill trees but save on ink. We all do it.

Things I got out of this:
-Nothing Else Matters is inspired somewhat by Wicked Game
-Thematics of each song on the album, plus inspirations both musically and lyrically
-Made me listen to Lulu once again with an open mind. Still sucks, but I tried.

However:
-Using the same Camus quote twice in a book does not make this a “thoughtful evaluation” on the album. You can also stop it with the Kierkegaard. It’s annoying and frankly a little too pretentious.
-I get it, Metallica was inspired by AC/DC, Aerosmith, and Motörhead… you don’t need to repeat it every 2 pages.
-You don’t need to describe what each band member plays every time they’re brought up. I mean, dude.

[Carey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really great retrospective on the Black Album and Metallica as a band.

My first Metallica albums in real time were Load and Reload, but the first Metallica album I fell in love with was the Black Album. I'm kind of on a Metallica binge with the 30 year anniversary of this album. In the 90s, I was this invisible, mouse of a girl with so much anger that I could never show. Metallica was a way for me to let that anger out. I've been a fan for most of my life and will be until the day I die.

My only beefs with this book were overuse of the term "soul groove." It's... really weird to use in terms of Metallica. And, the fact that Clint Eastwood's move Unforgiven was an influence on the song "The Unforgiven" when the movie came out after the album.

[Kavinay · Rating 2 out of 5]

+1 as an apologia for their transition from faster metal to hard rock. Not quite convincing but a generally solid try.

Comparing Hetfield's white boy's angst on "The Struggle Within" to Black peoples' fights for freedom though is emblematic of things going off the rails. You can still love Metallica but Masciotta's attempts to repackage their migration solidly into commercial appeal also keeps touching on there not being much more to it than stylistic change. The substance doesn't really evolve much in the latter work, for good or bad (which is pretty amusing really when defending LuLu).

[Ryan Splenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another solid entry in the 33 1/3 series. I’m not a Metallica expert, but I think David Masciotra offers a solid overview of the making of this album, the different themes it’s songs tackle, and the influence it had in defining heavy metal and bringing that genre to the masses and the mainstream. I’m sure Metallica super fans and purists might find the majority of this book common knowledge, but for non-specialists like me it was well worth the read.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a friendly critical look at Metallica’s Black Album. It is criticism though with all the expected hyperbole. I did enjoy reading it. I was even with the writer until he claimed the Metallica/ Lou Reed album requires a second look, or that Load/Reload is good. Those albums have good songs, but they’re not up to snuff in a catalog like Metallica’s. I enjoy a light easy read every once and a while.

[Avri · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good read, one of the books in this series where I could *hear* the music In the words. Would have been a four star book if the author had only used the phrase "soul groove" every third or fourth page, instead of every other page . . .

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda okay. Could’ve heard a little more from the band members and a little less of the author’s repetitive critical takes.

[Mitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Light reading, picked up bc the title is literally "Metallica's Metallica". The author tries very hard ascribe meaning to the band/album and it's kinda ridiculous.

[Carlox · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing look into one of the most important albums in rock history. Fans highlight historical moments, but it's Masciotra's prose what payed the bills for me. Would've appreciated that the writer wouldn't get so apologetic regarding the right-y stuff and symbols on this album.

[Wej · Rating 2 out of 5]

Recently, while driving, I found myself once again captivated by the powerful riffs of Enter Sandman from Metallica’s Black Album. The remaining tracks are just as forceful, with several truly unforgettable moments. It is an album that brought metal to the masses and remains immensely popular decades later.

Prompted by this rediscovery, I picked up one of the 33⅓ books, a series devoted to individual albums. None of the other volumes particularly appealed to me, but I was curious to see how Metallica and this album in particular would be handled.

To be honest, I was disappointed. The book offers brief biographies of the band members, a short history of the group, and a walkthrough of the songwriting process, with individual tracks discussed in turn. While I am not a hardcore Metallica fan, it quickly became clear that most of this material is well known. Other readers have confirmed that there is little here that would surprise anyone already familiar with the band.

For me, much of this information was new, yet it still felt insufficient for a compelling standalone book. I struggled to identify the intended audience. Dedicated fans will likely find it superficial, while newcomers may find it flat and uninspiring.

[Jeff · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a terrible book. It was written by a music critic for other music critics to enjoy. This book reminded me of a paper I wrote in college--I had 7 pages of good material, but it needed to be 12 pages long, so I added a bunch of filler.

It didn't help that the book was peppered with the author's own political views, that had nothing to do with Metallica. I found it incredibly humorous that in the last few pages, the author states that Metallica is not a political band, after I spent the entire book wondering why the author kept talking about politics.

[Jamison Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing in this killed it for me. Too full of hyperbole and strings of fawning adjectives.

[Tripp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just not one of my faves. Some good interviews here though.

[Justin Nelson]

I’ll die for the lore