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By the tip of the Nineteen Eighties, Metallica’s place as thrash steel’s greatest band was unassailable. They entered the 90s with their sights set on an excellent larger prize: changing into the world’s greatest rock band, interval. The one drawback was that there was no method they had been going to do it with one other file like 1988’s prog metal-tinged epic …And Justice For All.
“After we had been executed with …And Justice For All there was no place to go,” drummer Lars Ulrich informed Uncut in 2020. “We’d hit the wall. After taking part in all these songs on the street for a few years we mentioned, ‘There’s bought to be a reset right here.’”
It wasn’t simply Metallica who felt that method. By the beginning of the brand new decade the whole music trade was seeking to hit the reset button. Glam steel, which had dominated MTV for the previous few years, was quick approaching its sell-by-date, and whereas thrash could have crossed over into arenas with the landmark Conflict Of The Titans tour, it too felt lengthy within the tooth.
But one thing was stirring in Seattle. Bands akin to Soundgarden, Mudhoney and a pre-superstardom Nirvana had been mashing collectively punk and steel into an abrasive new sound dubbed “grunge” by the press – and it will present sudden inspiration for Metallica.
“It was about two or three o’clock within the morning. I had simply been listening to Louder Than Love, the Soundgarden album,” recalled guitarist Kirk Hammett in 2017. “I heard that album, I used to be impressed; I picked up my guitar and out got here that riff.”
Hammett’s early morning riff would turn into the idea of Enter Sandman, itself the primary track the band wrote for what would turn into their self-titled fifth album (aka the Black Album). Metallica wished their subsequent file to be a 180-degree shift away from …And Justice For All’s advanced time signatures and epic working occasions, and Enter Sandman encapsulated this back-to-basics method.
Stripped their sound correct down wasn’t the one factor that that had modified. Metallica had loved a fruitful relationship with Danish producer Flemming Rasmussen since Experience The Lightning, however they figured they wanted recent enter to assist them execute their nice leap forwards.
Enter Bob Rock, who had labored with Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, The Cult and Mötley Crüe. Recruiting such a industrial producer was a transparent sign of Metallica’s intent.
“Some folks thought Bob would make us sound too industrial,” mentioned James Hetfield. “: ʻOh, Bob works with Bon Jovi, Bob works with Mötley Crüe.ʼ But when Flemming Rasmussen labored on a Bon Jovi file, would Bon Jovi unexpectedly sound like Metallica?”
Not that Metallica had been solely comfy with Rock at first – nor vice versa. However having labored with a few of rock‘s greatest egos, the producer actually wasn’t unafraid to trample over the band’s emotions.
“I actually didn’t give a shit, to be trustworthy,” Rock recalled to Uncut in 2014. “Once they began doing issues the best way that they had all the time executed, I simply gave [songs] again to them. They had been fairly stunned. Once they’d do silly issues I’d name them on it. Lars would present up actually late and I’d say, ‘What a fucking asshole you’re…’ I don’t assume folks did that to them earlier than.”
But Rock’s affect on Metallica was speedy. The place the band had beforehand recorded their components individually, he insisted the play collectively within the studio.
And it was Rock, together with Lars Ulrich, who pressured James Hetfield into rewriting the track’s lyrics. The frontman’s authentic subject material revolved round Sudden Toddler Dying Syndrome, or cot demise – the road “Off to by no means by no means land” was initially “Disrupt the proper household”. However the drummer and producer each thought the subject material was too heavy, and informed Hetfield so.
“That pissed me off a lot!” the singer informed Guitar World in 2018. “I used to be like, ‘Fuck you! I am the author right here!’ However that was the primary problem from another person and it made me work tougher.”
Hetfield swallowed his annoyance and rewrote the lyrics, reframing it as a form of twisted lullaby that drew on a toddler’s fears, actual and imagined. The Sandman of the title was a reference to a legendary determine who would sneak into kids’s bedrooms to sprinkle sand of their eyes (mockingly, the band had been sitting on the title Enter Sandman for “six years”, in accordance with Lars Ulrich).
Not every part Bob Rock instructed made it previous Hetfield and Ulrich. The producer wasn’t satisfied that the finished Enter Sandman was an apparent hit, preferring the thrashier Holier Than Thou because the album’s first single. This time the drummer intervened, holding agency in his perception that the observe was the proper approach to launch what he knew could be Metallica’s most essential album.
And so it proved. Launched on July 29, 1991, Enter Sandman reached No.16 within the US and No.5 within the UK. However this was greater than Metallica’s greatest single thus far – as Lars intuited, it was the proper leaping off level for the subsequent stage of their profession, teeing up the Black Album just below two months later.
Enter Sandman and the Black Album proved to be game-changers, turning Metallica from one among steel’s greatest bands into a real mainstream phenomenon (additionally they hastened the demise of the thrash scene – which of their former friends might hope to match it, artistically or commercially?).
Thirty years on, Enter Sandman marks the largest turning level in Metallica’s profession, and a track that’s embedded deep inside not simply steel’s DNA however the DNA of in style tradition as an entire – what number of different songs have been lined by crooner Pat Boone, Motörhead and King Crimson mastermind Robert Fripp and his spouse Toyah?
“It actually did sweep throughout the board,” mentioned Lars Ulrich in 2020. “What’s attention-grabbing for me is I burn out on lots of the stuff we do, however it has such endurance. A brief, easy rock track.”
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