{"id":6500,"date":"2026-03-15T16:22:54","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T21:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=6500"},"modified":"2026-04-13T16:45:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T21:45:49","slug":"metallica-always-trusted-their-gut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=6500","title":{"rendered":"Metallica Always Trusted Their Gut"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first people Metallica thanked when they won a Grammy Award in 1991, for what became known as The Black Album, were the progressive rock band Jethro Tull. Not because of their inordinate influence on Metallica, or even because Metallica felt a kinship with them\u2014but because Jethro Tull hadn\u2019t put out their own album that year to stand as competition.<\/p>\n

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Tull had infamously won the award for Best Hard Rock\/Metal Performance in 1989\u2014a reflection of both the Academy\u2019s disconnect with metal culture and how uneasily it sat in the mainstream. And while The Black Album\u2019s win didn\u2019t constitute acceptance, per se, it acknowledged what fans of the band had understood for going on 10 years: Metal was the vanguard of hard rock, and Metallica was the vanguard of metal.<\/p>\n

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Stream-Metallica (Remastered). Image Courtesy Of Apple Services<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Drummer and cowriter Lars Ulrich says they used to labor for hours over the perfect take, Frankenstein-ing together fragments of drum parts, punching in riffs, blending and overdubbing until every wrinkle was ironed flat. They wanted precision, and by precision they meant technical mastery\u2014a superlative in a world where the goal is to play as hard, fast, and complicatedly as possible without slipping.<\/p>\n

And it isn\u2019t that The Black Album isn\u2019t complex. But whereas tracks like \u201cOne,\u201d \u201cMaster of Puppets,\u201d and \u201cSeek & Destroy\u201d\u2014songs that not only defined Metallica\u2019s sound, but the sound of \u201980s metal in general\u2014foregrounded complexity as proof of the band\u2019s stamina and ambition, the music here is streamlined and the performances natural. Ulrich says producer Bob Rock helped them understand their recordings not just as seamless stacks of riffs, but as shapes with ebb and flow, rise and fall.<\/p>\n

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In the songs\u2019 simplicity is a clear confidence: \u201cEnter Sandman\u201d and \u201cSad but True\u201d are two of the heaviest tracks the band recorded, but also two of the most straightforward. \u201cThe Unforgiven\u201d evokes Celtic folk and the majestic spaghetti Western soundtracks of Ennio Morricone (whose \u201cThe Ecstasy of Gold\u201d long served as their walk-on music), but it works just as well around the campfire. James Hetfield wasn\u2019t sure whether \u201cNothing Else Matters\u201d even belonged on a Metallica album\u2014it was so personal, so disclosing. But they\u2019d always trusted their gut, and in doing so helped revise Led Zeppelin ballads for the post-punk era: They thrash, but they do it with tenderness.<\/p>\n

Every product\/service is selected by editors. Products\/Services you buy through these links may earn “Streamapse Online Magazine” a commission or revenue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first people Metallica thanked when they won a Grammy Award in 1991, for what became known as The Black Album, were the progressive rock band Jethro Tull. Not because of their inordinate influence on Metallica, or even because Metallica felt a kinship with them\u2014but because Jethro Tull hadn\u2019t put out their own album that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6502,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-circle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6503,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6500\/revisions\/6503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}