Metallica is one of the biggest hard-rock acts in history. They’re currently slaying fans on tour and their classic records continue to shift units, as two of their classic titles just reached new certification heights by the Recording Industry Assn. of America.
The band has announced through their press representatives that their self-titled 1991 album, known as The Black Album, has been certified 20 times platinum for sales in excess of 20 million copies.
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That’s big enough news, but in typical Metallica style, there’s more. Masters of Puppets, the band’s third album, has been certified eight times platinum for over 8 million in sales.
The Black Album is seen as Metallica’s mainstream breakthrough as it went to No. 1 in 10 different countries, including the U.S. where it spent four weeks atop the Billboard 200 beginning the chart week of Aug. 31, 1991.
“We had come off the …And Justice for All album and tour. For me, it was pretty obvious that we had taken the progressive, complicated side of Metallica as far as we could take it,” drummerLars Ulrich, who writes the bulk of the band’s songs with singer/guitarist James Hetfield, said in an interview for The Billboard Book of Number One Albums. “The songs kept getting longer and more and more sideways. When we took those songs out on the road, we realized that was it. We really needed to make a major change — not so much for commercial reasons, but creatively we had exhausted that route.”
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During that same period, Ulrich had begun to rediscover his hard-rock roots by listening to classic sides by the Rolling Stones and AC/DC. “The one thing in Metallica that we had not done was to really sit down and try to write a bunch of short and more to-the-point songs,” he said. “We decided to take what we do in Metallica and make it a little more straightforward and not be so concerned about trying to show our musicianship.”
The plan worked. The first song that Ulrich and Hetfield wrote for the new album was “Enter Sandman,” which Ulrich said, “That was the most straightforward, simplest song we had ever written. We did that in two days. That kind of set the tone for the whole record.”
With producer Bob Rock, known for such classics as Motley Crue’s Dr. Feelgood, on board, Metallica went on to write and record such classics as “The Unforgiven,” “Wherever I May Roam,” “Nothing Else Matters” and more.
“Everyone has one album when everything comes together,” said Ulrich. “This was ours.”
Metallica is currently on the third year of its M72 World Tour, which has set attendance records at venues ranging from SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles to the JMA Wireless Dome in Syracuse, N.Y. The band’s next gig is Wednesday, May 28 at Northwest Stadium in Washington, D.C.
