Last Thursday, August 12th, Metallica 's The Black Album celebrated its 30th anniversary since its release. The band's fifth album was a resounding success and propelled Metallica's career beyond the metal fan base.
In an interview with Classic Rock , guitarist Kirk Hammett spoke about what the band had in mind for the album at the time it was made. “We didn’t want to follow the same progressive, demanding line. We were aiming for bigger things,” he says. “You have to remember that at that time some giant albums came out – Bon Jovi , Def Leppard , Bruce Springsteen … eight, nine million copies sold. We wanted that, obviously. We wanted a Back In Black AC/DC album is the best-selling rock album of all time.
Hammett went on to say that the songs on The Black Album basically “wrote themselves” and cited the example of “Enter Sandman,” whose riff simply appeared. “It was three in the morning and I was sitting in my room. People ask, ‘What were you doing awake at three in the morning?’ Well, I was in tour mode. I was playing guitar, I had nothing else to do,” he recounts.
“I had been listening to Soundgarden all day. They were a band that James [ Hetfield ] and I loved. I was just trying to capture that essence and the riff came out of nowhere,” he concluded.
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the iconic album, Metallica brought together 53 artists for the so-called Metallica Blacklist – a selection chosen to release their own reinterpretations of tracks from the Black Album . Among the versions released so far are two of "Enter Sandman," performed by Juanes and Weezer . Check out the complete list prepared by Wikimetal.
READ ALSO: Metallica releases alternative version of “Nothing Else Matters”; listen here
