Into the Black: The Inside Story of Metallica, 1991-2014

"This is a two-volume biography of Metallica. There aren’t many good metal biographies, but this one is very well written and researched. Metallica is an important band, fundamental to the development of the genre, and in the nineties they became one of the biggest bands in the world. The second volume interests me more than the first volume, as it deals with Metallica from the nineties and onwards, when they conquered the world with what’s known as The Black Album of 1991, which was a compromise between their earlier style and a more commercial, mainstream metal sound. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter What I find fascinating is what happened next, in the extended midlife crisis for the band as they try to work out where to go next. The second volume shows in sometimes horrifying, sometimes inspiring detail Metallica’s struggle to cope with how you age in this kind of music. When you’ve spent the eighties developing an innovative new style, where do you go from there? What happens when you have achieved all your ambitions a thousand times over? I kind of respect Metallica for the messy way in which they’ve done it. I know that sounds odd. I think it tells us interesting things about how innovation and ageing works in metal, but also in the wider rock field as well. It is also a good read as they’re so exceptional and paradoxical. If you want to understand the challenges metal faces, studying Metallica is a good way of doing it. There is to an extent, yes. There are forms of metal that emerged in the nineties and noughties onwards that the old guard have been very suspicious of, to say the least. For example Nu Metal, which bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit developed in the nineties, mixes rap in with metal. A lot of metal people really can’t stand that, or the emo-influenced metal which emerged in the 2000s. “I’m always struck by how a lot of the audience are like me, in their thirties or forties, or even older” But I think we’ve reached a point now that with the internet, everything is available at once and those old lines between generations and sub-genres are much less clear than they used to be. It is certainly common to find young people influenced by bands that were making records before they were even born. And when I go to gigs by young, more out-there experimental metal bands, I’m always struck by how a lot of the audience are like me, in their thirties or forties, or even older."