10 best Metallica cover songs

At this point, there’s no real need to discuss Metallica’s global influence. Forty years of career and 125 million albums sold, rock legends are undoubtedly one of the greatest groups in the world. Much of that prestige centers on the massive success of their fifth studio album, Metallica, affectionately known to fans, critics and even the band themselves as “Black Album”.

Released on August 12, 1991, the “Black Album” remains the best-selling record of the past 30 years, and as described by author Ben Apatoff in Metallica: the book at $ 24.95, it “changed the sound of metal hits”.

In a book included in the luxury box of Metallica, journalist David Fricke notes that the album sold over two million copies in four weeks, as much as … and justice for all had sold in three years. “Even for Metallica, the most successful band in American underground metal,” he writes, “it was surreal arithmetic”. This surreal arithmetic never slowed down as the record went 16 times platinum in the United States, and in 2021 it returned to Billboard‘s Top 10 for the first time since 1992, reaching 9th place just weeks after his 30th birthday.

With the dominance of the “Black Album” comes a lot of love and adoration as well as criticism, continuing to inspire and challenge musicians young and old. Slash recently told SPIN: “[Metallica] crossed in a way that made them a household name and they achieved it while maintaining their sonic integrity, composition and attitude. They took their signature style and recorded an album that became universally accessible, but still so cool … the Black Album legacy will live on forever. “

The late Vinnie Paul was not so impressed when he first heard it, explaining in Stronger than hell, “We felt like, although it was a great album, they had drifted away from a full-fledged metal band.”

No matter where the rest of the world lands, Metallica remains proud of the album they created in the early ’90s with producer Bob Rock. This is evident in the massive box set they released in 2021, as well as the fact that they performed it in its entirety, backwards, on September 26, 2021 for the first time since they released it. did in their own Orion Music + More festival in 2012. But more than just a tribute to the past, the band also invited friends – 53 friends, to be exact – to help them propel the “Black Album” into the future.

Enter The Metallica Blacklist, a massive compilation that features these 53 friends sharing their covers of their favorite tracks from the album, with each track benefiting Metallica’s charitable foundation, All Within My Hands, as well as a charity of artist’s choice .

Just as the influence of Metallica is considerable, the artists of Blacklist. Country superstar Chris Stapleton turns “Nothing Else Matters” into a nasal song; jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington totally transforms “My friend in misery”; Weezer’s pop rockers stay as close to the original “Enter Sandman” as possible, while also nodding to their hit, “Buddy Holly”. There are also a handful of recognizable rockers, including Corey Taylor who covers “Holier Than Thou”.

While a compilation of 53 groups covering 12 tracks will inevitably include some hiccups, Blacklist includes a considerable amount of hits. Listening to it over and over again, we picked out the top 10 covers of The Metallica Blacklist; Check them out in the gallery below.

Metallica: a photo timeline of their remarkable career