METALLICA [AKA: THE BLACK ALBUM]

The Black Album gets a lot of flack from Metallica fans, but personally I think it's an OK-ish album. It's not brilliant by any means; were the same tunes recorded by some band nobody had heard of for their debut album I suspect it'd have fallen into obscurity. But the fact is that it was recorded by Metallica - and what's more, given the best production job of any Metallica album to date.

Sure, the production doesn't reveal anything particularly special about the songs collected here, which are about as middle-of-the-road as metal can possibly get. But I'd very slightly prefer that to what you get on Justice For All - which is genuinely interesting, novel, and well- composed songs utterly ruined by shoddy production. It's like the difference between popcorn and gourmet food; screw up the fancy dinner and it'll taste horrible, whilst almost nobody can fail to make adequately eatable popcorn. And like average popcorn, the Black Album can be easily consumed without thinking too hard and will leave you feeling vaguely unsatisfied.