Hosts: Neil & Chris
Duration: ~51 minutes
Release: 19 May 2024
This time Neil and Chris plug into Metallica's Black Album, the record that dragged a thrash band out of the underground and straight into school corridors, rock clubs and living rooms everywhere. One of them arrives as a long time skeptic who grew up on the faster, nastier side of Metallica, the other turns up with memories of the Black Album as a gateway into heavy music and a formative guitar textbook. Over the course of the episode, you hear that tension soften as repeated listens and fresh context change old opinions.
They set the scene in 1990 and 1991, when the metal landscape was crowded with landmark albums from Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax, Testament, Death and more, and explain why the Black Album initially felt like a glossy outlier, even a pop record, compared to all that thrash and death metal. From there they dig into how Bob Rock reshaped Metallica's sound, why that enormous drum and guitar tone mattered so much and how it opened the door for an entire generation of heavier bands to chase big, slow, stadium ready riffs.
The conversation keeps circling back to riffs, from the slow, floor shaking stomp of Sad But True to the standard setting chug of Enter Sandman. Neil and Chris compare early thrash cuts like Hit The Lights and Battery with Black Album material to show how the tempos dropped, the grooves widened and the low end suddenly filled out. You hear how Bob Rock pushed the band to play together live in the studio, track through a Neve console to analog tape and fight for dynamics instead of pure speed.
They also unpack the Spaghetti Western and Morricone inspired colours in The Unforgiven, the marching intro to The Struggle Within and the tongue in cheek lift from West Side Story that opens Don't Tread On Me. Along the way they talk about Nothing Else Matters as the unlikely ballad born from homesickness that Elton John adores, even if one host would happily skip it, and how those song choices helped Metallica connect with listeners far beyond the metal die hards.
Whether you see it as a masterpiece or a sellout, the Black Album changed heavy music. Neil and Chris make the case that it gave metal permission to slow down, sound huge and still feel dangerous, paving the way for countless bands to chase that combination of weight, clarity and accessibility. They read out contemporary reviews that either celebrated it as a landmark or slammed it as overproduced, then show how both views can be true depending on where you stand.
By the end, the episode becomes less about picking sides and more about how our relationships with albums evolve over decades. You hear how one record can be a gateway drug for a young guitarist, a betrayal for a teenage thrasher and, years later, a shared standard everyone agrees you simply have to own. Perfect for: listeners who love big riffs and big production, fans who grew up arguing about whether Metallica sold out, and anyone curious how a single album can drag an extreme genre into the mainstream without completely losing its teeth.