James Hetfield (vocals, guitar; born August 3, 1963), Kirk Hammett (guitar;

born November 18, 1962), Jason Newsted (bass; born March 4, 1963), Lars
Ulrich (drums; born December 26, 1963), Cliff Burton (bass; born February 10,
1962, died September 27, 1986), Robert Trujillo (bass; born October 23, 1964)

Black Sabbath invented heavy metal in the Seventies, and Metallica redefined
it in the Eighties. Since erupting on the scene with their debut album, Kill Em
All, in 1983, Metallica has been a cutting-edge band the standard by which
metals vitality and virtuosity are measured. No band has loomed larger,
rocked heavier, raged more angrily or pushed the limits further than
Metallica.

The group formed in 1981 around the core of James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich,
who both lived in Los Angeles They met when Hetfield answered an ad placed
looking for someone to jam with. The pair bonded over their mutual love of
metal especially the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Ulrich, a Danish
immigrant, turned Hetfield on to this faster, punkier wave of British heavy
metal. The sensibility of that movement feisty, aggressive, anti-fashion and,
most of all, independent in spirit rubbed off as they assembled an American
band that would break free of commercial glam-metal cliches. The name
Metallica unambiguously expressed their metal salvage mission, and they
became identified with the subgenre known as thrash-metal.

In addition to singer/guitarist Hetfield and drummer Ulrich, Metallicas first

lineup included guitarist Dave Mustaine (whod found Megadeth after leaving)
and bassist Ron McGovney. Their first release was a seven-song tape, No Life
Til Leather, that spread their name through heavy-metals rabid tape-trading
underground. After slogging it out on the L.A. scene for two years, Metallica
relocated to San Francisco. With a revamped lineup that included bassist Cliff
Burton and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, they flew to New York to cut their
first full-length album. Kill Em All, released in 1983 on the Megaforce label,
revitalized the stale domestic metal scene. It was one of heavy-metals most
significant debuts, helping to establish the thrash-metal sound in America. It
also revealed the groups obsession with themes of death, destruction and
the darker realms of the human psyche.

Metallica followed Kill Em All with Ride the Lightning (1984) and Master of

Puppets (1986). Shortly after the release of Ride the Lightning, Metallica
signed to Elektra Records, making them the first American thrash-metal band
to land a major-label contract. Ride the Lightning peaked at #100 but spent a
year on the charts and sold more than 5 million copies over the next 20
years. Recorded in Copenhagen, Denmark, Master of Puppets proved to be
another pinnacle, exhibiting considerable ambition and intensity. Metallica
opened for Ozzy Osbourne on a six-month tour that furthered the albums
success and returned their previous releases to the charts as well. A
headlining tour of England and Europe followed, ending in tragedy when
Metallicas tour bus ran off an icy road in Sweden. Bassist Burton was killed
instantly.

Much like AC/DC after the sudden death of vocalist Bon Scott, Metallica
soldiered on, convinced that Burton would have wanted them to do so.
Metallica recruited Jason Newsted, from a band called Flotsam & Jetsam, as
Burtons replacement and returned to the road to play the unfulfilled dates.
Once off the road, Metallica pondered the future. They would eventually
record several major metal masterworks, but first they dealt with all the
changes and an injury Hetfield suffered a compound arm fracture in a
skateboarding mishap by getting back to basics. While warming up for their
next project in Ulrichs garage, they covered some of their British metal and
punk favorites. They inexpensively packaged the best of them as The $5.98
EP: Garage Days Re-Revisited.

Then came the hard work. It took a full year for Metallica to record ...And
Justice for All, a pulverizing double-album showcase of lyrical rage, intricate
arrangements and expert musicianship. Its songs were built from the ground
up, starting with riffs and themes and painstakingly assembled from there
until each complex piece was complete. Containing such favorites as One
and Blackened, ...And Justice for All represented a giant step forward for
Metallica.

In an article written before its release of, Jon Pareles incisively described their
music: Metallica pounds out irregular, stop-start rhythms, squeezing bits of
melody between salvos of guitar chords. Its jumpy, skittish music is closer in
structure to art-rock than that of most of the bands heavy-metal cohorts. The
songs move far too fast and unpredictably to sound like pop. And the lyrics
have nothing to do with fun, escapism or lust.

After all the demanding complexity of ...And Justice or All, Metallica made an
album of shorter, less intricate songs. Simply titled Metallica, producer Bob
Rock gave the collection a slightly more accessible edge. There was still
plenty of sepulchral gloom, and the all-black cover fans called it The Black
Album bore witness to the darkness within. It turned out to be the right
album at the right time, vaulting Metallica into the hard-rock stratosphere.
All of a sudden, on its own terms, headbanging thrash metal became went
mainstream via Metallicas untitled masterpiece. Metallica entered the album
chart at #1 and stayed there for four weeks. The album has sold more than
14 million copies in the U.S. alone. It even introduced Metallica to the Top
Forty with the singles Enter Sandman (#16), Nothing Else Matters (#34)
and The Unforgiven (#35).

Moreover, the music industry began an unlikely love affair with metal and
Metallica, bestowing the first of seven Grammys (to date) on the group with
Metallicas victory in the Heavy Metal Album category at the 1992 awards
ceremony. (Somewhat controversially, Metallica lost to Jethro Tull in the same
category in 1989.)

Everyone has one album when everything comes together, said Ulrich of
Metallica. This was ours.

The band toured for two years in the wake of Metallicas release and then
took time to assemble a big box of live Metallica for hardcore fans. Titled Live
Shit: Binge and Purge, it included two entire concerts (spread across three
videotapes), a CD of a third concert, a 72-page booklet, and tour souvenirs.
All told, there were nine hours of music on Binge and Purge, which was
packaged like an equipment crate and retailed for $90.

In 1995, Metallica set to work on a batch of material that would seed two
studio albums: Load and Re-Load. We wrote 27 songs, 1 to 27, and we
recorded 27 songs, 1 to 27, said Lars Ulrich. Load came out in 1996, a year
that also saw them headline the Lollapalooza alternative music festival. After
that, they embarked on an extended headlining tour, performing in the round
on two revolving stages that formed a figure 8. The tour, as usual, upped the
ante for staging, pyrotechnics (225 explosions!) and performance. The
second set of material from the prolific 1995 writing sessions was completed
and released as Re-Load in 1997. Both Load and Re-Load topped the charts,

giving Metallica three consecutive #1 albums in the Nineties.

In 1998 Metallica returned to the Garage Days concept, quickly cutting a

batch of hard-rock and heavy-metal covers. They combined a disc these with
a second disc that included the out-of-print Garage Days Re-Revisited EP and
various other covers that had turned up on B-sides and non-album projects.
The artists covered included everything from Motorhead to Diamond Head,
the Misfits to Mercyful Fate. The result was the hard-hitting, fan-pleasing 27song double-disc Garage, Inc.

On April 21st and 22nd, 1999, Metallica appeared with the San Francisco
Orchestra. The two-night stand, performed at Berkeleys Community Theater,
was edited into a distillation punningly entitled S&M (i.e., Symphony and
Metallica). A period of group therapy and sobriety ensued for Metallica in the
early years of the new millennium. As they worked on a new album, St.
Anger, as well as themselves, longtime bassist Jason Newsted left the band
and was replaced by Robert Trujillo. This difficult time of change and
confrontation was forthrightly documented in the 2004 film Some Kind of
Monster. St. Anger divided longtime fans, some of whom were already upset
with Metallica for their litigious stance on illegal music downloads over peerto-peer networks like the original Napster. Nonetheless, St. Anger became
Metallicas fourth #1 album, sold two million copies and won the group
another Grammy for Best Metal Performance.

Working with Rick Rubin, Metallica returned to its harder, riff-rocking roots
with Death Magnetic, released in 2008. An album of lengthy, multi-part
songs, it returned the group to the thrashy sound and style of its late-Eighties
epics, Master of Puppets and ...And Justice for All. It also gave Metallica their
fifth chart-topping album, and the old-school thrash-metal approach attracted
some formerly alienated fans back into the fold.
Over the course of three decades, Metallica has conquered the world, selling
over 100 million albums and playing for millions in concert all over the world.
They created a mass audience for the metal genre and made it possible for
many other aggressive-sounding bands to get signed and heard. Metallica
has always opted for honesty over artifice. Theyve also challenged
themselves relentlessly, thinking big and acting ambitiously. They continue to
make a mighty compelling noise.

Metallica - See more at:

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