Steve Huey, All Music Guide

After the muddled production and ultra-complicated song structures of ...And Justice For All, Metallica decided that they had taken the progressive elements of their music as far as they could and that a simplification and streamlining of their sound was in order. While the assessment made sense from a musical standpoint, it also presented an opportunity to commercialize their music, and Metallica accomplishes both goals. The best songs are more melodic and immediate, the crushing, stripped-down grooves of "Enter Sandman," "Sad But True," and "Wherever I May Roam" sticking to traditional structures and using the same main riffs throughout; the crisp, professional production by Bob Rock adds to their accessibility. "The Unforgiven" and "Nothing Else Matters" avoid the slash-and-burn guitar riffs that had always punctuated the band's ballads; the latter is a full-fledged love song complete with string section, which works much better than might be imagined. The song- and riff-writing slips here and there, a rare occurrence for Metallica, which some longtime fans interpreted as filler next to a batch of singles calculated for commercial success. The objections were often more to the idea that Metallica was doing anything explicitly commercial, but millions more disagreed. In fact, the band's popularity exploded so much that most of their back catalog found mainstream acceptance in its own right, while other progressively inclined speed-metal bands copied the move toward simplification. In retrospect, Metallica is a good, but not quite great, album, one whose best moments deservedly captured the heavy metal crown, but whose approach also foreshadowed a creative decline.

Genevieve Williams, Amazon.com

Called "the Black Album" by many (due to its monochrome cover), Metallica marks the group's entrance into the mainstream, with shorter songs, simpler song structures, and slower tempos overall. That said, this is an excellent album, featuring some of the best songwriting Metallica has ever done. "Enter Sandman," "Wherever I May Roam," and "God That Failed," despite being slower and more groove-oriented than the band's earlier work, feature the same heavy riffs and heavier rhythms that have always been a feature of Metallica's music. The band goes introspective with "Unforgiven," and proves that they can write a ballad with "Nothing Else Matters," which succeeds better than one might expect. Overall, this is a high-energy album despite its laid-back approach, and is in many ways superior to the previous . . . And Justice for All, which was weakened by overly complicated song structures and mediocre production.

Metallica: James Hetfield (vocals, guitar); Kirk Hammett (guitar); Jason Newstead (bass); Lars Ulrich (drums).
Recorded at One On One Recording, Los Angeles, California between October 1990 and June 1991.

When a genre-defining group like Metallica, whose past albums have rocked the charts with virtually no airplay, enlists the aid of a hit-making producer like Bob Rock, the result is bound to be monumental. METALLICA, their sixth studio release, surpasses all expectations.
METALLICA is an extremely heavy album. It carries a presence, a huge, live sound different from that heard on their previous recordings. What once could not be tamed has been refined, resulting in a fuller, more powerful guitar sound in an already guitar-intensive band. They have evolved from the messy, unabashed thrashers of their youth into a more confident, poised and angry bunch, not only retaining their fire but stoking it into a chunky, tight-fisted maelstrom of scowling energy.
Serious riffs provide punch and punctuation for James Hetfield's gruff vocals which rage against society and religion, and revel in suspicion and sarcasm. METALLICA is full of songs just as potent as the hugely popular "Enter Sandman," yet is not as complicated as their recent albums have seemed. "Sad But True," which is just as low down and dirty as anything labeled "grunge," exemplifies the poise of the metal band that can foresee the punchlines to their riffs and has the patience to wait for them.

CMJ New Music Report, Issue 250, August 23, 1991)

How does one even begin to write about an album whose release, rivals the arrival of baby Jesus and seemingly shows him up? [Easy now-ed.] Although difficult to critique, the long-awaited follow-up to Justice... is as basic and punchy as they come, loaded with fully-realised ideas and complete songs. Returning to the vibe of Kill 'Em All, here Metallica takes a slower, more mature approach to that era, streamlining the excesses of their last few albums without sacrificing the musical growth. Although much of this condensing was down to the bond, kudos are due to producer Bob Rock, who has dropped the usual milk-crate drum sound for a larger-than-life punch, while adding a load of low end to the bass (as opposed to Justice's nonexistent bass sound, this album gladly destroyed eight sets of speakers when I was stereo shopping last week!). However, some things remain the same: track number four is a ballad ("The Unforgiven"-quite possibly their best song to date), and throughout, they serve up more bold riffs than most killer bands could dream up in a career. However, most impressive of all is the growth in James Hetfield's vocals, which soar and roar from the gritty "Sad But True' to the belting "Holier Than Thou" to the gut-wrenching ballads ("Nothing Else Matters" is one of the most disgustingly tear-jerking love songs I've ever heard). All said, with long player number five, Metallica shows absolutely no signs of fatigue, and will be looked upon in years to come as the Led Zeppelin of our time.

Simon P. Ward, DOT Music

Also known as the 'Black Album', by virtue of its singular cover, this record finds Metallica defiantly striding away from the thrash tomb their detractors predicted they would become embalmed in.
Although drafting in 'rock' producer Bob Rock may have caused certain sections of their hardcore fanbase to cry 'sell out', his presence in accentuating the good things on this album is undeniable.
There are still the brutal moments that characterise Metallica at their loudest and finest - the bullish 'Holier Than Thou' with its reinforced concrete riffs; the staccato, looping grind of 'Through The Never' and the epic 'My Friend Of Misery'.
Yet at the same time there is a wider spectrum covered here - the Morricone-influenced spaghetti western epic 'The Unforgiven', and, in particular, the striking ballad 'Nothing Else Matters' which displays the most tangible human soul to Metallica ever.
Hetfield's vocals and Ulrich's drumming are allowed plenty of room on top, ensuring nothing gets bogged down in heaviness but, where necessary, still overwhelms.
This album is packed with highlights, from the downright evil opening riff of 'Enter Sandman' - with Hetfield playing the villain of every child's nightmare with aplomb - to the surging guitars of 'Sad But True', through to the almost military beginning of closer 'The Struggle Within'.
An album that has Metallica sticking a middle finger at those who would see them as simple dumb thrashers and one that marks them as true innovators in an often static genre. Magnificent.

Mark Cooper, Q Magazine

Clothed in a stark black sleeve, Metallica's fifth album deliberately simplifies the more elongated progressive pieces that dominated ...And Justice For All. Producer Bob Rock has wedded their undiminished sense of attack with their increasing flair for melody and some nifty arrangements that blend acoustic guitars and some sterling wah-wah guitar solos from Kirk Hammett. James Hetfield's lyrical landscape remains as bleak as ever with songs like the single Enter Sandman and The God That Failed exploring some of the darker aspects of childhood. Refreshingly free of the airbrushed production and ham-fisted imagery that dominates so much of the genre, Metallica manage to rekindle the kind of intensity that fired the likes of Black Sabbath before metal fell in love with its own cliches.

Robert Palmer, Rolling Stone, issue 612

The first thing you notice about Metallica's new album is that it sounds great. The band's previous disc, . . . And Justice for All, seemed a model of hard-rock clarity and punch when it was released in 1988. Played back-to-back with Metallica, Justice sounds almost thin; the new record's sonic textures and audio depth of field are a revelation.

But Metallica isn't simply a superspiffy engineering job. Its detail and dynamics are essentially musical in concept, part and parcel of the arrangements, song structures and impact of individual tracks. The first few bars of the opening cut, "Enter Sandman," tell the tale. The song begins with the fade-in of a chugging guitar riff. As the riff rises to full volume, ushering in the rhythm section, an entirely different guitar texture, sounding like a phased, finger-picked, electric twelve-string, comes in under and behind the primary riff. All this subtlety draws the listener in, focusing attention. When drummer Lars Ulrich enters, the whack of his first snare-drum accent seems to jump right out of the record and into the middle of the room. By the time you're half a minute into Metallica, musicianship, arrangements and engineering are working hand in hand to define the parameters of a sonic space that the entire disc will claim as its field of interaction.

In stylistic terms, Metallica is about diversity. Justice, and to a lesser extent the 1986 breakthrough album Master of Puppets, connected one song to another with related themes and riff structures; these were unified works, almost thrash-metal concept albums. Each of the twelve songs on Metallica stands on its own. The multipart musical structures that paced the much longer compositions on Justice haven't been abandoned, but the forms have been telescoped into songs in the four- to six-minute range. Whenever a passing musical moment reaches out and grabs you, it's a pretty safe bet that you won't be hearing it again until the next time you play the album.

When a band slaps an eponymous title on its fifth album, some sort of redefinition is implied. And in fact, Metallica is a long, long way from the charged momentum and skullfuck imagery of the early material created with original lead guitarist Dave Mustaine (now the general of Megadeth) and the late bassist and band spark plug Cliff Burton. Several of the songs on Metallica are downright gentle. "Enter Sandman," possibly the first metal lullaby, does advise the child it addresses: "Hush little baby, don't say a word/And never mind that noise you heard/It's just the beasts under your bed/In your closet, in your head." But the song's delicately layered guitar textures and the unmistakable empathy in James Hetfield's vocals signify an abiding affection. "Nothing Else Matters" doesn't even pretend to tough it out. It is hardly an MTV lite-metal ballad, but the soaring vocal harmonies on the chorus, the delicate acoustic-and electric-guitar interplay between Hetfield and Kirk Hammett and the way Ulrich deftly blends his orchestra chimes and cymbals into the guitar harmonies make it a ballad all the same. Hetfield's lyrics offer a key to the more personal, directly emotional drift of the album when he sings: "Never opened myself this way/Life is ours, we live it our way/All these words I don't just say/And nothing else matters."

Several songs on Metallica seem destined to become hard-rock classics. "Wherever I May Roam" blossoms from a sitarlike opening into a stomping but lyrical power-chord rocker, with Jason Newsted's chordal bass voiced with the guitars to provide that unmistakable Metallica crunch. When Hetfield sings, "My body lie, but still I roam," he echoes, perhaps unconsciously, one of bluesman Robert Johnson's most indelible images. Structurally diverse but containing a transcendently melancholy and melodic chorus, the song sounds like an anthem in the making, but an anthem kept to a human scale. "The Unforgiven," "My Friend of Misery" and "Sad but True" seem likely to have a comparable staying power. And Metallica doesn't neglect the head bangers, the group's original constituency. "Through the Never," "Of Wolf and Man" and "The Struggle Within" are hard-edge and hard driving, and even the prettiest songs forgo any hint of radio-ready sweetening.

Metallica is no longer the cutting edge of metal, as it was in the beginning, but the band is expanding its musical and expressive range on its own terms. This can only be a positive step for a group that is effectively bridging the gap between commercial metal and the much harder thrash of Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth.

Metallica's only sour note is "Don't Tread on Me," which seems unequivocally jingoistic. After the impassioned protest against war and social injustice on . . . And Justice for All, "Tread" comes as a shock. Message to the members of Metallica: Check out the lavishly funded Hill and Knowlton public-relations campaign that sold the gulf war to America's couch potatoes. Do a little research on the game of musical chairs that finds Republican bigwigs shuffling back and forth between top-level cabinet posts and key boardroom positions with certain oil-rich multinationals. Go fight in a war yourselves. Then wave the flag and jump on the yellow-ribbon bandwagon, if you still want to. "Don't Tread on Me" rings hollow in its music as well as its lyrics, the only outright bummer on an otherwise exemplary album of mature but still kickass rock & roll.

© Frank Steven Groen