What albums mark a sad moment in metal?

[no country for old wainds]

i forgive metallica their many compositional failings because of their outrageous ambition and uniqueness, both of which are understated by many people i think. none of their albums are unqualified successes, but i still love their best songs very much.

 

[Pitiless Wanderer]

This is just completely wrong on so many levels. The Black Album is a love or hate album, there are just as many old school Metallica fans that love that album as there are that hate it. Anyone that was around att can tell you the same thing. Load was clearly the biggest departure(or complete abandonment) from their sound and that's when just about all of their old school fans had enough and stopped listening to them altogether. That cant even be argued. And this is no secret either, it happened with just about everyone i knew that listened to Metallica back then, or at least were big fans of the band

Well, that's your opinion and I definitely see where you're coming from. I just look at it a little differently. First off, I actually don't know anyone who looks at TBA as a "love or hate" album. Everyone I know likes certain songs and dismisses others. The pattern seems to be people initially liking Enter Sandman but getting sick of it almost immediately (rightfully so) and then really only coming back to Where Ever I May Roam (the best and most powerful song on the album), The Unforgiven and Through the Never. But I don't know anyone who absolutely loves the album song for song or hates it the same way. Now, as far as Load being the biggest departure from their sound, hold on to your butt, but I really don't think so. At least not from a macro point of view. TBA is a mid tempo heavy rock record. It is not a heavy metal record. At least not heavy metal proper. The first 4 Metallica albums are proper thrash metal records of extremely high quality. So, when hearing TBA for the fist time and it's immense, radio friendly production, mid tempo pace throughout, childish lyrics and stripped down song writing, you can imagine how shocked some fans were. That album, as mentioned by others in this thread, really solidified them as a radio friendly, commercial rock band that went mainstream. It was a huge departure from AJFA and all that came before it. Notice I'm not critical of the band for this decision - I'm just stating what I see as facts. So, when listening to Load and it's mid tempo pacing and horrible lyrics and songs, I honestly was not/am not that surprised. At least not nearly as much as when hearing TBA for the first time. Given the direction the band was headed in, Load seems like a logical next step musically. But going from Justice to TBA? I don't know man, that seems like more of a leap. Indeed, the biggest "shock" about Load was really the image transformation that the band went through. The short hair cuts and cleaned up appearance really contributed to the hated disgust of that record just as much if not more than the music itself.

 

[no country for old wainds]

the black album is clearly heavy metal IMO, but i do agree that it was probably more surprising than LOAD at the time. it's not necessarily that it's a bigger departure so much as that it's a reversal of direction. you kinda knew metallica were gonna start doing random commercial shit once the black album dropped, whereas after AJFA i imagine it seemed they could get more experimental if anything.

keeping in mind it was the first metal album i ever heard, the songs on the black album which i liked the most initially were 'of wolf and man' and 'don't tread on me'. is that weird?

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

i swear man, sometimes this place =/= reality.

 

[Baroque]

Metallica is somewhat overrated on other areas, but no one can deny Kirk Hammett wrote some badass guitar solos and riffs.

 

[CiG]

They have two gems to their name, Master Of Puppets is okay too but the rest are trash.

 

[Draehl]

RTL feels like the awkward phase between the raw super thrashy KEA and the more powerful style and produced MoP. That and it has some of the worst filler of their early catalog (Fight Fire With Fire, Escape, Trapped Under Ice) while the worst/closest track to filler on MoP is Disposable Heroes, which is pretty solid in its own right.

MoP >AJFA > KEA > Black > RTL > the rest

 

[CiG]

 

[no country for old wainds]

i like all three of those songs, they're not rewriting any rulebooks and they're kind of amateurish perhaps but i've never cared about that, they fit the coldness and rawness of that album perfectly. hell, i like virtually every song through all the first four, they're one of my favourite bands. i don't really get RTL fans dismissing AJFA as trash; nearly every song has riffs and passages with major old school appeal, and it's the closest to the dark/raw/chilly feel of RtL of any of their albums, arguably pushing that mood even further. the only problem is a number of songs are long for no reason (well, the reason is pretentiousness) and the b-side is structurally kind of all over the place, but there's too much goodness on there for that to be a dealbreaker. at the very least it's a super interesting failure.

 

[arg]

i know none of you will give a fuck but it was sad when...

Tarja was fired from Nightwish right after the End of an Era tour

and when Tim Lambesis was locked up for hiring a hitman to kill his wife


what band member departures were you sad about?

 

[The Butt]

So you're saying St Anger and Load are better than Kill Em All?

Kill Em All is alright. I guess it's more consistent than St. Anger and Load, but unlike the latter couple albums I don't terribly like any of the songs.

You're out of your mind.

That may be, but that doesn't negate my point. :V

 

[alex76]

You people are fucking crazy. The first four albums were a godsend!

 

[alex76]

Obviously, when Nirvana - Nevermind came out, it signaled the death of metal's golden age. Metal since has not enjoyed the spotlight quite like it had before.

 

[Mulver]

You can't underestimate the important role Metallica played in popularizing metal music, whether you like that fact or not. Their music certainly made me a metalhead and I'm sure it made millions of other people appreciate metal too.

As for sad, Rebel Extravaganze (what kind of fucking album title is that?) by Satyricon maybe. They never came back from that debacle. The late 90's swayed a lot, A LOT, of previously good bands into making pure shit for some reason.

 

[no country for old wainds]

ya i like to think i would've got into metal without metallica but i guess i'll never know. funnily enough i first got interested in metallica through hearing 'the unforgiven ii' haha.

no idea why anyone would want metal to be 'popularised' or in 'the spotlight' anyways

 

[CiG]

Nirvana didn't do anything to metal, the 90's was just a very awkward period.

 

[no country for old wainds]

Kill Em All is alright. I guess it's more consistent than St. Anger and Load, but unlike the latter couple albums I don't terribly like any of the songs.

this is totally one of those things where five years down the line youll be like WOW 2016 ME WAS AN IDIOT THIS RULES

 

[Omni]

I would say that the debut is the album with the most consistent quality. It may lack some of the (often successful) attempts at glory of the next few, but it also lacks a good deal of the stumbling involved. I also favor the energy on that album.

 

[The Ozzman]

this is totally one of those things where five years down the line youll be like WOW 2016 ME WAS AN IDIOT THIS RULES

That's me with a lot of shit I say sucks that you guys like

 

[EspaDa]

The time when Cryptopsy released The Unspoken King was a sad moment. But they eventually came back with decent s/t album.