06ENTER SANDMAN METALLICA

(1991)

A watershed moment in heavy metal history

Some years are watershed moments in musical history, and 1991 was one of them. It was the year that grunge broke and that hair metal was given a shove out of the mainstream. It was also the year that Metallica’s self-titled fifth album was released. Forever known as ‘The Black Album’, it was the record that established the San Francisco quartet as the biggest metal band in the world. And while it yielded five hit singles – Nothing Else Matters, The Unforgiven, Sad But True, Wherever I May Roam and Enter Sandman – it was the latter that really caught the public’s imagination, reaching No 5 in the UK chart.

With its doomy, clean-picked minor key riff, haunting lyrics and massive sound, it was the track that set the template for the rest of The Black Album, both in sound and in atmosphere. It was also the first song written for the album, born from a riff that lead guitarist Kirk Hammett brought in. But as drummer Lars Ulrich explained in a Classic Albums documentary: “The riff that’s on the record and the way it exists today is not really the way Kirk wrote it.” Hammett’s initial idea was the first five-note refrain morphing straight into the powerchord breakdown. But by chopping and repeating the first clean riff, and doubling it up on the bass, Enter Sandman as we know it was born.

“We tried to expand every sound to the max,” said producer Bob Rock. “We tried to get the guitars as big as possible, the bass as big as possible, the drums... You know, big and weighty.” To this end, Rock insisted on the band playing together in one room, contrary to their previous M.O. “They thought it was a lot of work,” Rock told Mix magazine, “and they didn’t understand it. But this was the only way I knew how to make a record. To me, it was about capturing the feel that they wanted.”

Both Hetfield and Hammett are ESP men, and for The Black Album sessions Kirk played through Marshall amps with Mesa/boogie heads. However, the amp that Hetfield put his black ESP Explorer through was a little more complex, as engineer Randy Staub told Mix. “We ended up building this huge guitar cabinet for him,” Staub said. “I think we had nine or 11 cabinets – some stacked on top of each other, some on the floor – and then we’d get this huge tent around this pile of cabinets curtained because as we were getting James’ guitar sound, he kept saying, ‘I want it to have more crunch!’”

They got the crunch, the weight, the heaviness. Ultimately, they got the defining metal song of the 90s.