I just started to listen to Metallica, and I'm going back and forth between "Ride the Lightning" & "Kill 'Em All" as my favourites.

Master of Puppets is okay. I haven't really warmed up to ...And Justice For All (except for "One")

The Black album is good, a little easier on the ears than Justice or Puppets, but maybe a little more meh.

I haven't listened to any other Metallica yet. Is Load any good?

I haven't listened to Load/Reload in years.

I always like S&M even if it's kind of gimmicky.

PJ Harvey - Stories From The City

This would be one of my all-time favorite albums had the Radiohead mook stayed at home. As it is, it's "only" damn excellent.

If you were in junior high when Load and Reload came out, you’d find something to like about them. But they’re just... ugh... just, like, total jizz compared to the first three albums.

And Justice for All is the most hard on the ears because it’s mixed like dick. A thorough remix of the original masters would be a welcome thing. As things stand, it’s not something I ever listen to, though I know it has some nice moments (despite the tin foil din.... it’s like a stadium metal album that aspires to sound like a Hüsker Dü record. It’s just a terrible job, truly).

Black album is shit. Just dumbed down, short, poppy sellable version of the Master of Puppets approach. Fuck that shit. And fuck everything else.

S&M is fun for the older thrashy songs played with a symphony. Otherwise, bleh meh meh

Bought this the day it came out. Special place in heart for always. Not my favorite Polly Jean album, but goddamn great indeed

Cool thanks for the reply & advice :)

No prob man.

Early Metallica is just totally classic (never let anyone tell you otherwise), and I have fond memories of “Hero of the Day” and “The Memory Remains” and stuff from Load and Reload, but if you didn’t grow up with those albums I’d say there’s nothing worth visiting there for the first time now. Nostalgic appeal alone. Kinda like, y’know, Oasis or pre-“Ok-this-is-legitimately-and-inarguably-awful-and-we-can’t-pretend-it’s-anything-but” Smashing Pumpkins.

you're trolling me aren't you?

For me personally, Metallica was always... eh. My first real exposure to them was the black album, but this was around the same time that Nirvana/Pearl Jam/RHCP came into my world. I was what? 10? 11? And this was really when music started to matter to me. So really Metallica at that time was like "oh I like a few songs," but I lumped them in w/ like GnR as this sort of lame testosterony rock that stuff like Nirvana was the antithesis to.

In high school it was all the meatheads that were into Metallica. Load and all that was huge for them. Wasn't there a Some Kind Of Monster soundtrack too? I don't remember. SO I kind of stayed away/hated it by association of that group of high school jerks.

As stated, I did find something interesting about S&M at the time. Because it actually seemed interesting, and maybe outside the comfort zone of usual Metallica fans? I don't know.

So I didn't really come around to the band until like 2008 when everyone here was into Death Magnetic. I feel like my reaction was "wait, what? You guys like Metallica? Really?" - which I imagine is how everyone thought of me talking about Korn at the time so whatevs. So then I did kind of give them more of a shot and revisit things and explore more.

I'm still not a big fan or anythign, but I respect them more. This conversation even has me more interested again.

I've heard most of the studio albums. At least up through Reload. Or St. Anger.

I've always been interested in Live Shit: Binge & Purge, and Garage Inc. Can anyone speak on the quality of those?

I've also always meant to watch Some Kind Of Monster, as I've heard it's pretty fascinating.

Oh fuck off. I feel like you guys just made me interested in Metallica again. :\

Great flick! Even non-Metallica fans will find it absorbing, because it's ultimately about basic human behavior. Heck, even non-music fans can dig it.

The black album was my first introduction to Metallica too. It's not a shit album like Sev says. The second half of the album (save for Of Wolf And Man) is whatever, but the first half? Man, I was obsessed with those songs when I was a teen. Having said that, I cold quite happily never listen to Nothing Else Matters again. The mopey "i'm in love and it hurts" ruined that song for me.

Some Kind Of Monster is easily one of the best documentaries out there. Easily. Just miss too much from cringing so much. Paying a psychiatrist $50,000 a week (was it that much?) to tell you how to get your shit together is next level stuff.

Live Shit Binge and Purge was great from what I remember. Say what you like about them, they know how to do a great gig.

Anyway, whilst I'm here I might as well add that I've been hammering Steely Dan and St. Vincent.

I'd actually never listened to St. Vincent before this week. She was always one those, as with so many bands, that I knew but never bothered with.

Ha. I guess I started a Metallica debate.

Was listening to Crazy for You by Best Coast but I have to go :(

Better than any Metallica album.

New Breeders is great!

Here’s the thing about Metallica: Their first three (or four, or even five if you’re asking some people.... but I say first three) albums are just undeniably influential, significant and awesome. I’m almost never in the mood to listen to any kind of metal, but when I am, I can’t hell but compare what I’m hearing — even if it’s a totally different sub genre like Deafheaven or The Body — to Kill ‘Em All/Ride The Lightning/Master of Puppets. Those albums are the Bible of the genre post-Sabbath. Some may say AC/DC or Judas Priest, but no... Metal *is* those albums (and of course the first handful of Slayer release).

Everything after that is just variations on arena-level hard rock. I listened to Black and Load and Reload in school and liked most of it well enough, but it’s not essential.

I feel perfectly happy and comfortable placing Metallica’s first three albums right next to Meat Puppets and Minutemen in my album collection, and I’ll defend that shit to the death against anyone who wants to take issues with it.

Personally I prefer Slayer on an aesthetic level — they had more of a punk think going under the thrash — but Metallica’s first trilogy of albums is something every self-respecting music fan should probably own.

After that it’s whatever.
I’m actually surprised to hear that people here liked Death Magnetic in 2008. I can’t remember anything from that album except that it sounded like it was recorded in a two dimensional coffin (like the one on the cover!) ... so people probably appreciated the “DIY”-ness of it. But meh. IDGAF about it or anything else that came out after 1988 at the absolute latest, except for the aforementioned nostalgic connection to, like, “Hero of the Day.” But it’s not good music. (Actually it probably is, technically speaking, good music, but artistically it’s candy.)

I wasn’t trolling you with the SPs comment. Not intentionally anyway. That’s just what came out of my brain/fingers at that moment. Swear to god.

Ugh, I found it fucking cringeworthy. I couldn’t stand it. It was uncomfortable as hell to watch, and not entertaining in the least. I don’t think I finished it.

Group therapy for a bunch of ego maniacs making a terrible album.
Probably has some merits as a film, and as a behavior study, but I couldn’t sit through that. It was like watching a married couple fight in a restaurant while I’m trying to enjoy my food and talk to my date. I just wanted to teleport away.

Black is a finely mastered, effective pop album, where a bunch of thrash dudes who used to pound out Misfits and Mercyful Fate covers and go on political tangents and shun commercial radio and MTV decided they wanted to cash in on their huge cult folllwing by condensing epic songs down to verse-chorus-verse structures, stripping away all the dynamics, adding in a fucking ballad (cuz Mutt Lange) and effectively not being metal anymore.
That album was the beginning of the end. Not Load. Black.

It’s the metal equivalent of Modest Mouse’s “Good News For People Who Like Bad News” or Weezer’s “Green Albun.” It’s not the worst thing ever, or the worst thing they’d ever make, but it was a cash-in. Guitars and vocals were mixed to the front, movements were excluded completely, and all that was left was the crack cocaine version of what used to be some really bangin’ Bolivian marching powder.

No, it’s not total shit, but if they’d gone the other way and leaned in to the intellectual elements of their sound and tried to build on the great things about their early records, they could have done something really special. Instead they have one of the biggest selling albums of all time, and 80 percent of the people who own it are Motley Crue fans.