Let’s Rank All The Metallica Albums!
****Originally published on 11/11/21, this ranking has been updated and retooled as of 5/6/24 to include 72 Seasons.
When I wrote this post in 2021 I said “I’ve wrestled with how to address Metallica on this blog. I started this post 10 months ago before I finally decided to finish it and get it onto Doug’s Music Snobbery. Metallica been all over the media recently as the Black Album hits 30 years and the band themselves hit 40 years as a band. I’ve got mixed feelings on Metallica but I can’t deny that I’m still a fan to a degree and that they’ve meant a lot to me over the years so….” I also called it “Metallica Albums Ranked & Thoughts as They Turn 40” but I’m retooling it to bring it more in line with my subsequent album rankings…
I still have those mixed feelings but after 2 1/2 years, an LP and seeing them again live they’ve trended a little further upward for me. Unlike the other rankings here this one starts at the top instead of revealing #1 at the end, and I’m still good with that.
So let’s rank the albums with some extra thoughts thrown in at the end - how’s that?
Let’s Rank All Of The Metallica Albums!
12. St. Anger (2003) So what do we do with this one… I actually give them credit for this album because they did try, and they worked through some serious turmoil as documented in the Some Kind Of Monster film. It’s kind of fascinating in its own way because there are no guitar solos and it’s a different direction to shake things up after the Load albums. The problem is the sound of the snares is so distracting it would be hard to appreciate the album even if the songs were great. Some Kind Of Monster, Invisible Kid & Sweet Amber are kinda cool but it sounds like Lars is banging on metal pots or something…. it’s ridiculous. And in the end the songs don’t quite hold up, with the decision not to let Kirk solo being a misstep. So even though this one is barely listenable I don’t totally dislike it. I just can’t rank it higher.
11. ReLoad (1997) Reloading a batch of songs from the Load recordings. Better Than You, Where The Wild Things Are, Carpe Diem Baby, The Unforgiven II - these are HORRIBLE. Best songs here are Attitude and Fixxxer. The Memory Remains and Devil’s Dance aren’t bad. But otherwise….. it’s another “load” alright.
10. Hardwired…To Self Destruct (2016) I’ve moved this one up from 12th to 10th. Again, another one that has benefitted from the triumph of 72 Seasons in improving my attitude. I’ve listened to this a little more in the last couple years and it’s not bad. I never thought it was “bad”, I just never got interested and it didn’t grab me - which I guess isn’t good and that’s why it was so low. Still feels a little by the numbers and it’s just kinda there. But Moth Into A Flame is solid, Now That We’re Dead is pretty good, the opening title(ish) track is a guilty pleasure if a little goofy, and so maybe this one will continue to grow on me, we’ll see.
9. Load (1996) I once heard someone say this is where Metallica decided that being a slightly heavier ZZ Top would be sufficient. I love ZZ Top. I don’t love reaching for Metallica to get a ZZ Top fix. They changed their look, sanitized the logo and came up with about one “good” album’s worth of material that would have been more respectable if they would have whittled the songs down to one LP instead of releasing everything they could come up with over two albums, leaving both albums with too much lame-assed and watered down filler. Even then it wouldn’t be a “great” Metallica album but it would have been okay. Bleeding Me is the best track on the album - a slow burn epic that is worthy. But songs like Wasted My Hate, Poor Twisted Me, Until It Sleeps (the first single), Hero Of The Day & the Bon Jovi Western ballad influenced (?) Mama Said are just total garbage. What cracks me up is when James growls on weak songs like Hero to try to remind us that this is still metal somehow (?).
***So wow…it’s clear to me that this was an example of where my head was with Metallica three years ago and how 72 Seasons has repaired this a bit. I didn’t say one positive thing about Load outside of Bleeding Me being the best track on the album. I’d like to add that I still love The House That Jack Built, Cure, Thorn Within and The Outlaw Torn. These are indeed really good songs.
8. Metallica (aka The Black Album) (1991) Okay so this album isn’t “bad”. And yes it has a few really heavy classics like Enter Sandman, Sad But True and Through The Never, but yes it’s a sell out. Yes. It’s a sell out. It’s a bid to make more palatable music for radio to sell more records. It’s a deliberate play to shorten the songs and give them catchy choruses. It represents the beginning of the end of the band I loved as I knew them. Don’t try to argue this with me. It got way overplayed, way over celebrated, and ultimately it way started to piss me off as more Metallica fans appeared because of Nothing Else Matters and Unforgiven. Blech. The metal songs are relatively simple & straightforward compared with what came before - they don’t really reveal more layers over time, and so they wear thin after the first 5000 listens which is about how many times the singles were forced down our throats. The album also contains the first horribly embarrassingly awful Metallica song with Don’t Tread On Me.
7. Death Magnetic (2008) The rightful follow up to …And Justice For All as far as I’m concerned. Even the format is similar with the instrumental as the penultimate track followed by the speedy closer. And by the way Suicide and Redemption is actually my favorite Metallica instrumental. Fight me. This album still has latter day Metallica elements of James being too far forward in the mix, another goofy Unforgiven sequel and the like, but there are a few undeniable rippers with All Nightmare Long being the best of them and it’s a return to the epic length songs that they’re good at when the material is strong. Much of it is indeed strong here.
6. 72 Seasons (2023) 72 Seasons lands in the upper half, but more significantly it ranks as the best thing they did since …And Justice For All. Who knew they still had this in them? And they even released it with an album cover generator that you could use to personalize it for fun like I did above! As for the music - no lame ballads, minimal cheese, all killer, no filler. This is Metallica putting their best foot forward without sounding like they’re trying too hard. The songs are there, the riffs are there, the playing is tight and James Hetfield sounds great. More growl, less croon and he sounds like part of the band again in the mix to me as opposed to the featured vocalist accompanied by the band which is a complaint I’ve had about a fair amount of latter day Metallica. And it’s not like I can measure how far forward he had been in the mix to prove that, it’s just how it comes across to me. They sound like a kick ass unit again, here to destroy like they’re supposed to and let the chips organically fall where they may without forcing another Unforgiven on us for example. The last album I felt this way about was Death Magnetic and that was really the only one I truly did since …And Justice For All, but I think this one is a little better. The only advantage Death Magnetic had if we’re comparing is the incredible instrumental Suicide & Redemption. There are no instrumentals on 72 Seasons and I love me a good Metallica instrumental. But as I said there are so many strong tracks here and I think this album is better overall. Take You Must Burn! for example. It doesn’t have to be fast to be killer - Harvester of Sorrow is one of the all time heavy tunes in the catalogue and this reminds me of that a bit in its effectiveness. It’s not always easy to pull off super heavy at mid tempo without it just turning out….mid. But the thrash that is here is legit as well without sounding labored. The opening title track is fantastic - awesome changes, great riffs and a total epic at 7:39 long. The lead single LuxÆterna is great - and was great live when I saw them in Detroit last year.
5. Garage Inc. (1983-1998) I’m sticking this here - not a proper Metallica album, but the original 1987 Garage Days Re-Revisited paired with a whole album of fresh covers at the time (as well as most of the significant covers released up to that point) belongs here. Metallica is one of the best cover bands ever and they’ve made so many of these “theirs”. They have great taste in picking them - A National Acrobat / Sabbra Cadabra are you kidding me? So cool and so well executed. What’s kind of funny is Megadeth covered Paranoid which is so obvious (although it’s still great), but Slayer like Metallica went with the less obvious pick of Hand Of Doom. Helpless is incredible too - nasty, aggressive, the execution is off the charts and Diamond Head is their favorite band to cover. Actually the entire Re-Revisited EP might be my favorite release by this band, and the 1998 covers are fantastic - even Bob Seger’s classic Turn The Page sounds pretty cool in Metallica’s hands. Hard to rank covers ahead of originals, and in some cases I’d leave covers albums off of lists like these, but this is the right spot for this collection.
4. Ride The Lightning (1984) Okay yes this is still a classic. But I think it suffers ever so slightly as a sophomore effort. I don’t love the production, and some of it sounds slightly dated to me. I can only listen to Creeping Death so many times, and Trapped Under Ice, Escape, The Call Of Ktulu…. I don’t know man. None of it’s bad, just not on the same level as the material on the albums above it on this list for me. The first 4 tracks are all killer and metal standards to be sure, my favorite of which will still always be For Whom The Bell Tolls. Just such POWER there and it doesn’t matter that it’s been hijacked and chopped up for use in stadiums a million times (looking at you Rutgers). It’s still awesome.
*Sidenote: Rutgers plays the opening riff over the stadium speakers EVERY time the opposing team has a 3rd down, and what passes for a student section there does a sweeping hand gesture to go with it. But Rutgers never stops anyone on 3rd down when they DO get someone TO third down because Rutgers sucks, so sometimes you get to be annoyed several times on the same drive. The fact that I still LOVE For Whom The Bell Tolls after attending even just one game in Piscataway is a testament to the song’s greatness.
3. Master Of Puppets (1986) So many consider this the best Metallica album and frankly I think the top three are all classic so I’m not in major disagreement. I’m just not sure I find the last three tracks here to be essential. The first 5? As good a run of 5 songs as you’ll find and a clear leap forward from Ride The Lightning, with Battery possibly being my fave Metallica song period. The last 25 seconds throw you on the ground and kick you in the head - in the best way. The sound is fantastic as well. The production is definitely an upgrade from the previous two albums - the peak of the classic lineup before Cliff Burton died tragically. The songs are more complex, longer, better developed overall in my opinion. Disposable Heroes is an underrated epic to me - it should be revered as a towering metal classic in my book.
2. Kill ‘Em All (1983) The rip roarin’ debut which was the original pure thrash aesthetic for these guys. They sound young and hungry, and they kick ass. Whiplash is the ultimate metal anthem - pure speed and an ode to headbanging with the declaration “We’ll never stop, we’ll never quit ‘cuz WE’RE METALLICA!” and you don’t dare question it. What more needs to be said? James in later years would change the lyric to “YOU’RE Metallica” when performing it live. It’s a creed - a movement - the power inherent in the very name of the band. They also had the audacity to start a song with a ridiculous screaming guitar solo before any lyrics like No Remorse - once again, taking no prisoners in the approach - the band shot out of a cannon. As good a debut album as you’ll ever find. Hit The Lights, The Four Horsemen, Phantom Lord, Jump In The Fire - all awesome.
1. …And Justice For All (1988) Yep. I figure this will be mildly controversial, but it’s just so damn epic. I was late to the Metallica game and this was the album I really got into them on. My buddy Steve Everitt was responsible really. Another buddy in high school Tom McCarthy exposed them to me but it didn’t quite stick. Steve came into my room at South Quad at Michigan, put on One and was thrashing around the room when it picks up - he’s nuts by the way - and for whatever reason that’s what did it. So Justice was the one I dove into. The weird thing is that the muffled-to-non-existent bass on the album which has been famously documented for years didn’t bother me at all then. I’ve always liked the dry production of that album - it’s immediate like they’re playing in your living room, but wouldn’t it be worth a try to bring up & separate the bass just a little??? It’s still a pretty big flaw in such a masterpiece. What are they waiting for? WHY hasn’t there been a remastered version of this album with the bass restored? I’d love to hear it that way. As for the songs, they pushed the epic lengths to the limit here and that’s still what I love about it. The different time signatures, the lyrics, the time they allowed to develop the ideas and let the themes unfold. And yet it’s just SO HEAVY too. I’ve never heard another song quite like the title track. Almost 10 minutes and they make ALL of it count. Shortest Straw, Harvester Of Sorrow, Blackened, Eye Of The Beholder, One…. not a bad cut on the album and I don’t believe there’s another Metallica LP with a full 6 epics on the level of those I mentioned (not to mention the other three are also really really strong), so I have it number 1. No filler. Meanwhile Justice was released only FIVE years after Kill ‘Em All - think about that! They recorded 4 full length LPs and the best metal covers EP in history in that 5 year stretch. It took them 15 years to record the next 4 & another round of covers, and not all of it kicked ass even as they skyrocketed to fame.
My original list included Lulu - the collaboration with Lou Reed. I removed it from the list because it’s really not a “Metallica album.” It was and still would be last. It was an interesting idea in theory that didn’t work.
So yes, Metallica has disappointed me plenty, but I think you can tell from my descriptions especially of the first 7 entries in particular that I have a lot of love for these guys. I’m sure if they were to ever read this they wouldn’t view it that way since I’m often less than complimentary to everything after but it’s true.
I’ve seen Metallica live probably about 7 or 8 times including last year which was damn good, and I actually got to meet all four of them backstage with a couple of my buddies in ‘94 when I was living in Cleveland - my buddy Steve who I mentioned before got us backstage as was typically the case when he was the starting center for the Browns and the toast of that town. They were all actually very cool - we met each one of them individually - Lars was the only one who we didn’t get to talk to much but the others were all gracious and down to Earth. I actually felt Hetfield was just as starstruck by Steve as we were by him which was funny to see and quite surreal.
So hey, congrats to these guys for making it 43 years and counting. That’s no small feat. They’ve been pretty self-destructive at times, survived tragedy and lineup changes and they’re still here. Cheers to Metallica!
M10 Social is owned by Doug Cohen in West Bloomfield, MI and provides social media training and digital marketing services from the Frameable Faces Photography studio Doug owns with his wife Ally. He can be reached there at tel:248-790-7317, by mobile at tel:248-346-4121 or via email at mailto:doug@frameablefaces.com. You can follow Doug’s band Vintage Playboy at their Facebook page here. You can also visit our other business Detroit Jerky at the website www.DetroitJerkyLLC.com!
******************************************************************************************
Tune in to the 📷Doug&Ally📷Morning Show T-F between 8:30 & 11 EST UTC-4 on Heckle by following them on Heckle or Twitter at @frameablefaces! Also check out the Doug & Ally Morning Show podcast at anchor.fm/frameablefaces and everywhere you listen to podcasts! Doug also tweets at @dougcohen10 and @M10Social!