IN THE BLACK
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wah pedal is an essential component of your lead sound. Ever since, it’s been something of a calling card for you. What led you to embrace the wah so wholeheartedly on that record?
HAMMETT I think a lot of that was just a culmination of having been on tour for …And Justice for All and just having fun on stage, stepping on my wah for a lead break, or in between songs, or whatever. But when I really think about the solos on the Black Album, I came up with all of them within about a week — “Enter Sandman,” I had that one complete by the second or third time we played it. Because when the songs are strong, the solos come easy. And back then, I’d compose a solo and then, if it felt appropriate in the studio, I’d bring in the wah and see if it brought anything more out. But I’ve never really written a guitar solo with a wah pedal. It’s always been after the fact. And it’s only been to get more intensity and more emotion out of the sound. I’m not from, like, the Eric Clapton school of wah, where I step on it on every downbeat. I don’t think anyone really does that anymore, anyway.
As a band, you were pushing out on your musical boundaries in so many ways on the Black Album. There’s unusual sonic ear candy all over the record. There’s orchestration. There are full-on ballads. You were open to taking the music in any direction at that point in time.
HETFIELD Yes, very much so. I’ve always been an explorer in that sense, and I’ve always loved the production side of it — the layering and the sonics and even the orchestration of it. That’s why I loved bands like Queen growing up. And Bob was more of an experienced producer, obviously, than we were. We fashioned ourselves as producers, Lars and I. [Laughs] But it’s just because we knew what we wanted and that was it. There was not any openness. There wasn’t any depth or knowledge, sonically. So Bob taught us a lot about that, and I was so excited to open his toy box of different sounds, different gear, different pedals, different percussive aspects…
HAMMETT You know, there’s prominent percussion all over the place. There’s a shaker and an egg on every single track on that album. It’s real subtle, but if you listen for it, you can hear it. There’s a French horn in the beginning of “The Unforgiven.” I mean, I fucking didn’t know what a fucking French horn was. We had no idea what a French horn was. But we were like, “Okay!” And these were ideas that were brought to us by Bob Rock. But any opportunity to make the songs more unique, more individual, more intense, we did it.
What gear were you using in the studio?
HAMMETT I used my black [Gibson] Flying V that I always used, and I also had my ESP “Caution” Strat and my ESP “Zorlac” Strat. I also had my black Jackson Randy Rhoads Flying V. My ’89 Les Paul Custom with EMG pickups. A Gibson ES-295. A Tom Anderson guitar. And at the very end of the sessions I got my ESP Spider [Eclipse], which is like a Les Paul Special or Junior kind of shape. I remember the day I got it I took it out of the case and said to Bob, “Let’s do some solos with my brandnew spankin’ guitar!” I used it for the solo to [the Anti-Nowhere League cover] “So What,” which was recorded during those sessions.
thinking — “This is the song, this is the idea, I’m going to start with this, go through these changes and end up with something else!” You could see the sounds being created, the songs being created, the solos being created. I remember watching Kirk, and he was struggling, like “Shit, this isn’t working for me, what do I do?” … Watching the studio process broken down like that was so inspiring. You could see their pursuit of making it thicker, heavier and more muscular.
(Mastodon)
WHEN I FIRST heard the Black Album, I was... not disappointed, but because of the cleaner singing, I was like, “Whatever!” But later I went back to listen to it and was like, “Holy fuck!” That record is so good. I could name any song or any riff as a defining moment. The “Sad But True” riff is perfect, for example. I learned it on guitar recently because it sounds so simple yet so big with the palm-muting. It’s a real chugga-chugga record; every song has lots of that going on. Once I learned it, I couldn’t stop playing it. It’s such a satisfying riff. That’s why we’re guitar players, right? It’s fun playing other people’s music. It makes you feel good. I totally understand why cover bands have a lot of fun doing what they do.
(The Darkness)
MY ABIDING MEMORY of the Black album is always “Sad But True,” and it’s the opening gambit of that song. We were filming the “One Way Ticket” video in Iceland and driving through a glacier at night with the Northern Lights in the sky. That track was playing in a van full of the band and supporting crew. It was just so moving and so powerful, experiencing that record in that environment. I can’t imagine anything else would have had the same effect, really. It felt so immense. I think it still inspires us to this day, doesn’t it? When I say us, I mean humankind.
(Dream Theater)
THE RIFF THAT starts at about 22 seconds into “Sad But True” is a perfect example of one of the ultimate guitar sounds ever recorded. The percussive “chunk” sound that occurs when palm-muting a power chord with all down-strokes is such a signature quality of the Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+ amp used on this album, the same amp responsible for the guitar sounds on ”Master of Puppets.” Once described by a dear friend of mine as the sound made when “smashing a steel pipe against a brick wall,” that specific tonal quality can only come from that amp and was captured flawlessly on the recording and in the performance of this song. The Black Album epitomizes the perfect balance between memorable, heavy riffs, incredible songwriting and stellar production. It showed that a metal band can write an album filled with crushing guitar tones and still achieve overwhelming commercial success. It showed the world how Metallica would pioneer the next phase of guitardriven metal and bring their signature sound to more people than ever before without compromising what we all loved about them.
(Decapitated/Machine Head)
THE INTRO TO “Enter Sandman” is pure genius. That clean channel sounds like liquid glass, and then Kirk’s riff is like the Holy Grail. To start the album with that was mind-blowing for everyone listening for the first time. “Sad But True” had this heaviness and groove, thanks to the tempo and lower tuning… I’m sure a lot of guitar players will tell you it’s their favorite riff on the album. It also has one of my favorite solos on the album — and the tones across the board were amazing. “Holier Than Thou” feels like you’re driving at 300 mph on Formula One! There’s a moment after the solo where the bass goes together with the drums and then the guitars come in one by one with an amazing thrashy feel that only Metallica can deliver. DIAMOND ROWE
KIRK’S SOLO ON “The Unforgiven” is probably my favorite guitar moment on the album, followed by the main riff to “Enter Sandman.” I also have to mention the riffs in “Sad But True.” The rhythms and solos on the album taught guitar players like me how to write theoretically heavy riffs while still keeping them catchy. You can sing back most of the solos and riffs — and that isn’t as easy as one may think it is to create. It’s a very important album because I believe it was the first time a band as heavy as Metallica brought hard music to the pop forefront. They crushed every stereotype that a metal band could be given and became a global music sensation while playing a genre that was typically only seen as underground. It really paved a way for bands to come — and it still does to this day.
(Tetrarch) (Periphery)
ALL THESE YEARS later, the main riffs and rhythm tones from “Sad But True” are still oppressively heavy. In the Nineties, I was an old-school Metallica purist, so the Black Album was a departure for me in that a lot of the technicality and proggy elements from previous records were gone… so I didn’t come around right away. In fact, I found myself a little disappointed at first as I loved the long arrangements, impossibly fast riffs and angular sections from
The Black Album was not any of those things. But “Sad But True,” and that main riff in particular, illustrated something I still hold onto: [the fact that] mix, tone and production can make a riff hit a million times harder. If your tone and mix are dialed in, using fewer notes actually adds more weight and impact to a riff. In contrast, you could play one of the crazy riffs from “Master of Puppets” or “Blackened” on a $30 distortion pedal plugged into a lo-fi baby monitor and it’d sound a little impressive. But what the Black Album did for me was prove that when the drums sound enormous, the guitars are clear and the bass sits in the mix just right, restraint sounds even more menacing than complexity.
IT ISN’T ONE single moment; it’s the overall
There are so many Black Album songs that are now considered metal standards. Are there any cuts that each of you has a personal affinity for?
HETFIELD Gosh, you know, there’s definitely a lot of go-to songs — it’s obvious on this Blacklist album, where you see a lot of people gravitating toward songs like “Sandman” and “Nothing Else Matters.” And I’m really grateful to the bands that reached out a little farther and went for songs like “Don’t Tread on Me” or “The God That Failed.” But for me, I would say when I think of the Black Album, I think of “Wherever I May Roam” and “The Unforgiven.” Those two songs, they kind of tell the story of the times for us, I think. Especially “The Unforgiven,” which was very vulnerable and very revealing for me. And then “Wherever I May Roam,” that kind of encapsulated our quest for muscle, our quest for epic-ness and our quest for a solid mid-tempo song that would really get the crowd jumping. So those are the two that really get me. HAMMETT For me it’s “Of Wolf and Man.” I love that song so much. I mean, c’mon — I love werewolves! And that riff, I remember I played it for Lars and James, and one of them said, “You’re playing it backwards.” And I’m like, “No I’m not — what do you mean, backwards?” And they said, “Well, that part should be in the front and that part should be in the back.” So we flipped the riff around. It could work both ways, but it happened to work better vocally this way. And actually, I remember we had a few riffs that we were jamming on during the …And Justice for All tour, and that one was one of them. “Sad But True” was another. Those riffs had been around for a while.
You can’t talk about the Black Album without also discussing the tour in support of it. Needless to say, it was massive. It included performances at Woodstock ’94 and the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, a controversial stadium run with Guns N’ Roses and, basically, sold-out shows all over the globe. By the time it was over, Metallica were one of the biggest rock acts in the world.
HETFIELD At that time there was no fear as far as where we would go. We had, you know, round one, round two, and a lot of times round three in certain countries on that album. That kept us out there for three years. The tour shirts, we were running out of room on them for all the dates — there were concert dates going down the sleeves. [Laughs] But we were on a quest to play the B, C and D markets to build up our fan base. And that’s where a lot of our fans were. Not that they weren’t in the big cities, but the big cities get jaded with music. We wanted to go for more of the people that didn’t get music in their town a lot. That was important to us. And we did that not just in America but in most other countries that we were able to get into. We survived it, but it took its toll mentally, physically, no doubt spiritually. It toughened us up in some ways and it broke us down in other ways. But it’s an experience we’re grateful for.
HAMMETT The overall theme on that tour was, “Okay, we have the opportunity to do more shows. Wanna make the tour longer? Sure.” “Okay, we have the opportunity to go into B markets and C markets. Wanna make the tour longer? Sure.” We were into going to every place that we possibly could. We even played in places that we couldn’t fit the stage into. We went to fucking Delaware. We played a theater in New Hampshire. We played every single state. And it was a huge undertaking. We had a multi-level stage that had three front rows. We had the “snake pit” [a ticketed section in the middle of the stage where fans were able to watch the band perform around them]. It was like one big playground, but instead of monkey bars we had stairs. It was insane.
And you know, everywhere we went, we were selling out. Which was crazy, because before us there were only a few bands that were doing those types of numbers. Def Leppard had sold, like 12 million copies of Hysteria, and they were playing multiple nights in multiple cities. Bon Jovi was doing the same thing. AC/DC too. We observed that. We wanted that. And we realized that to get there we needed a really big album. We had the big album, and so the stage was set for us to do it. We took it to Japan, we took it to Europe, we took it to South America. By the time it was over we were a little worse for the wear, but it felt like a huge, momentous accomplishment.
When you look back on that time, what is the main thing you take away from the experience of making the Black Album and what that record did for the band both creatively and career-wise?
HETFIELD The Black Album really was the master key to everything. We started to be recognized and talked about as a force to be reckoned with in
the heavy metal world — and going beyond that, in the rock world, with bands like AC/DC and U2. We were super-proud to be a part of that legacy and to be able to take Metallica to the next level. And what made it all the better was that the mainstream came to us. It was wild to be, you know, in the grocery store and someone’s mom would say, “Oh, my kids really love your music… and so do I.” So what the Black Album did was… well, it made us really popular, basically. [Laughs]
HAMMETT We knew the songs were special and the album was different. It almost felt like we left the music of those first four albums to sit where it was, and we turned a corner and went somewhere else. And doing the Black Album put the hunger in us to continue to do that with future albums. We began to take huge risks with our music, and we did that because that’s what we did on the Black Album — we took big risks, and those big risks worked. And sure, the Black Album was really successful, but there’s a lot of different types of success. As successful as it was in terms of sales, it was equally successful to us creatively. Another real success is to see how the music is still living. The Black Album, it’s never-ending. It’s always here. I listen to that album and it doesn’t sound like 1991 to me. You listen to …And Justice for All? Okay, yeah, that’s 1988, ’89, for sure. Kill ’Em All? That’s a product of the early Eighties. But you listen to the Black Album? You listen to “Sad But True” or “Enter Sandman” or “Nothing Else Matters”? It feels like now. At least it does to me. And that’s an amazing thing. sound design and cumulative power. Everything from the thunderous tom sound Lars brought forth on “Enter Sandman,” the unexpected sensitivity and raw emotion of “Nothing Else Matters,” the mysterious and exotic lines of “Wherever I May Roam” and the prototypical riffs of “Sad But True.” I remember being 14 and experiencing those early days of guitar magic, where the instrument seemed to pull me in closer with promises of identity and confidence. Kirk’s solos on “The Unforgiven” and “Enter Sandman” provided an escape from everyday life. I wouldn’t be the guitar player I am today with the Black Album.
SATCHEL (Steel Panther)
AFTER THE SECOND refrain in “The Unforgiven,” there’s a solo where Kirk switches from Mixolydian to harmonic minor and hits the raised seventh over the minor five chord. Anyone who has studied music knows that even though this should create enough dissonance to make [Steel Panther singer] Michael Starr shit his diaper, the scooped mid frequency of the guitars makes it possible mathematically to raise the volume to well over 150 dBs in your car (assuming your stereo is like mine) and achieve the ability to wake most neighbors within a three-mile radius. Listen… I don’t know what the best moment is on this album, and that’s the point. That’s what makes this record awesome. Do you think James’ grandma ever told him he had a beautiful voice? He didn’t give a fuck. He sang anyway. Do you think Kirk gave a fuck that he wasn’t as technically advanced as Steve Vai? No. This is what being in a band is — four guys who are more together than apart. When I listen to the Black Album I hear songs that are simple, heavy and awesome. It’s still inspiring, just like Van Halen’s debut, just like Nevermind. And just like those records, it makes us mere mortals feel like we can achieve awesomeness with enough determination and practice. And maybe… Bob Rock.
JAKE PITTS (Black Veil Brides)
THE OPENING RIFF of “Sad But True” is what does it for me. It’s more than just the riff — it’s the tone. Listen to how beefy and chunky the guitars sound. Being 13, I noticed right away that I loved this guitar tone, and the production of the Black Album as a whole, and I knew I had to figure out how to get these sounds. That’s what started down my path into the production world from such a young age. Of course, I had to learn the long and hard way. I thought saving up my money and changing my bridge pickup to a better one would be the answer, and — like I said — I found out the hard way that there was way more to it! But I have to give credit to this album, and the production of Bob Rock for sending me down this path into the world of recording and producing. Little did I know many years later in 2014, I’d be making a Black Veil Brides album with the man himself