There can be endless debates about the genre's GOAT, but without a doubt, Metallica are the most successful band to ever play heavy music. Other classic metal bands have played it safe enough to have never upset the more rules-strict parts of heavy metal fanbase, and plenty have done it with less controversial decisions, but no band has taken heavy metal to more people than Metallica.
How the band's albums stack up are always a hot topic of conversation. The discography is built on four albums that perfected thrash metal while incorporating other subgenres, which helped grow both their band and metal culture at large. Everyone has an opinion on which is the best Metallica record. Given the size of the fanbase and the variety of people that the band have welcomed into the Metallica family, this debate is set to rage on forever.
12 72 Seasons
A Spluttering Effort From The Aging Empire
It is not a crime to be a little off the pace when it comes to raging heavy metal when you're in your early 60s. Metallica are in the twilight of their career, a legacy set for the rest of human existence for having conquered heavy metal and made it more mainstream on their own than literally any other band. This is worth pointing out because 2023's 72 Seasons does not befit Metallica's standards.
Usually a ruthlessly powerful outfit, songs like "Shadows Follow" and "Sleepwalk My Life Away" are disappointing, seeing Metallica plod along at a meek pace. It's an eye-watering drop-off from the pace of some of the material on Hardwired...To Self-Destruct. To suggest Metallica are a spent force creatively would be ridiculous at any point in their career, but 72 Seasons doesn't do anything to help their case.
11 St. Anger
Metallica Come Through Their Most Difficult Moment
To stand up for the almost universally maligned album, St. Anger saw Metallica recording under awful circumstances. Navigating rehab, the release of decades of personal tension, a member leaving, and a song with Ja Rule that nobody talks about, St. Anger is a raw and uncompromising piece of art from Metallica that dares to fail. It would have been so easy for them to poop out a bunch of songs that sound like Fuel.
Even some of the band's weirder decisions have aged well. One of underground metal's coolest bands, Sanguisugabogg, use the "ping" snare sound that gives St. Anger's title track and chugging "Invisible Kid" an uncomfortable, industrial tinge. The songs needed a producer with a spine to edit the metal millionaires, but it's unpolished, raw, and primal. It's nowhere near the high bar Metallica had set by this point, but in a world of bands happy to xerox their work again and again, or use nauseating pre-packaged narratives to sell radio-friendly slop, St. Anger still has its merits.
10 Death Magnetic
Rick Rubin Is Employed To Clean Up After St Anger
After making an album that was largely treated as a punchline, Metallica had to claw back some respect. Having seen his work with Johnny Cash, System Of A Down, and their Bay Area brethren in Slayer, Metallica turned to Rick Rubin in a move that was right for what they needed creatively, and they benefited from the mainstream clout Rubin was enjoying after working with Jay-Z on "99 Problems" and protest music with The Chicks. Rick was the guy you called to reconnect with your identity, and that was exactly what Papa Het and the gang needed.
"The Day That Never Comes" echoed "Fade To Black" and "The Unforgiven," the old school logo returned, and the guitar tone felt more metal-friendly. It's a patchy collection that has peaks like the inventive lead riff on "Broken, Beat & Scarred" and the catchy-as-hell "All Nightmare Long," but is dragged down by lows like the flabby and bloated instrumental "Suicide & Redemption" or a trudging song like "Cyanide" (which, inexplicably, was played in Metallica's live set for years).
9 Reload
The Second Of The Post-Black Album Hangover Albums
Maybe it's that it has a little more of the hard-rocking familiarity of The Black Album, or maybe it's that its predecessor took all the heat, but Reload was the better-received of the two albums that followed the Black's success. Powered by two of the best singles of the band's second phase, "Fuel" and "The Memory Remains" are more traditionally Metallica than the unclean "Until It Sleeps" or uplifting "Hero Of The Day." But then there's also the hurdy-gurdy on "Low Man's Lyric" and a lot of fillers.
Unlike its predecessor Load, Reload has a tendency to accept mediocrity too much for its own good. For every time a greasy biker riff lands an uppercut like the opening blast of "Carpe Diem Baby" or the roaring verses on "Better Than You," there are songs like "Attitude," "Prince Charming," and the car crash "Where The Wild Things Are." "Bad Seed" crushes, "Slither" kinda reworks "Enter Sandman" into something cool, and "Fixxxer" is mesmerizing and ominous. Reload would be better with a few tracks trimmed, but there's plenty of greatness to dig into.
8 Hardwired...To Self Destruct
A Real Return To Form As Metallica Roll Back the Years
"Moth Into Flame" is the sound of Metallica rolling back the years and the song that's best suited to be included alongside their immaculate first four albums. Following the release of the thrash-lite "Hardwired," fans were delighted that Metallica were delivering their most fan-pleasing sound to a high standard again. A double album felt questionable at this point, but the results and success warranted that output.
Keeping the engineer from the Rubin sessions and promoting him, Greg Fidelman helped steer a confrontational sound. Metallica sounded proud to be a metal band for the first time in too long on "Atlas, Rise!" and the attitude-driven "Spit Out The Bone." The touring cycle for this record was superb, and it felt like the world really fell in love with Metallica again during this period. The songs on this collection deserved that reception.
7 Load
One Of The Most Unfairly Criticized Metal Records Ever
There was simply no way to please everyone after Metallica conquered the world with The Black Album. Having already had Slayer fans leave the hall when "Nothing Else Matters" came into view, Metallica had become one of the most successful bands in the world in the first half of the '90s. Blazing a trail for the second time in their career, Metallica thrived in the post-Nirvana massacre that saw everyone from the hair bands to the other of The Big Four lose their creative identity and popularity.
Load was met with mixed reviews, but the album deserved better. It's easy to see why if "your Metallica" played "Blackened," the Alice In Chains-influenced sinister hard rock that Load provided wouldn't be for you. After cutting their hair and recording a country song in "Mama Said," Load was never given an appropriate chance, and absolute ragers like the crunchy, greasy "2x4," the menacing epic "Bleeding Me" and a whole host of others would be better regarded than they are. The tide has slowly turned on Load's public perception, and that is justice for an album that's much better than it's ever been given credit for.
6 Garage Inc.
Metallica Make Household Names Of Their Heroes
Before the internet opened up and streaming services provided everyone with a record collection as deep as their ambition, Metallica were responsible for the popularity of The Misfits, Mercyful Fate and more. The beauty of this arrangement is that these songs are played with such a unique and distinct personality that any song on Garage Inc. could be a Metallica original. Even songs by established artists like Motorhead and Thin Lizzy sound like pure Metallica because of the band's arrangement.
No matter what era of Garage Inc. you're listening to, Metallica are sensational at picking cover songs that suit them. Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band's "Turn The Page" is perfect for Hetfield's road-worn timbre and outlaw persona. Killing Joke's "The Wait" may have post-punk in its vein, but that Metallica chug is unmistakable. Garage Inc. is one of the greatest covers albums in existence because it feels like an album of originals, and the '98 recordings also contain Hetfield's most powerful vocal performance on any Metallica release.
5 Kill Em All
Metallica's Debut Made Them Masters From Day One
If you're at a Metallica show with 80,000 people, all losing their minds and shouting "SEEK AND DESTROY!" at James as he's launching into a hearty "searching...," that the songs on Kill Em All were written by an unsigned band. Enthusiastic and ready to kick your teeth down your throat in the name of hard riffs and pounding drums, Kill Em All is an infectious love letter to youth and heavy metal. It was game-changing, and it still sounds like skateboarding through Satan's playground on a board that's on fire.
What's striking about Kill Em All is its energy. It rattles at a breakneck pace on the likes of opener "Hit the Lights," the punk rock approach of "Motorbreath" and heavy metal bluster of "Phantom Lord." It ought to be illegal to be great enough to write a song as phenomenal as "No Remorse" on your first album, let alone the Mustaine-assisted "The Four Horsemen" and thrash classic "Whiplash." One of the best debuts in metal history and it only just makes Metallica's top five albums. What a band.
4 Ride The Lightning
Seven Perfect Songs
Building on the incredible foundations provided by their debut album, Metallica evolved emphatically and immediately. Able to rage as hard as any band in the scene on the likes of "Fight Fire With Fire," the band showed ambition instead of being satisfied with what they'd started on their debut. That ambition resulted in an album many consider to be their best.
Guided by the musical taste and vision of revolutionary bassist Cliff Burton, Ride The Lightning increases the standard and scope of everything Metallica had achieved up to this point. The band that wrote Kill Em All could not have penned a song as personal and moving as "Fade To Black" or as haunting and monolithic as "Call Of Ktulu." That they went on to expand and improve on that blueprint twice is why Metallica still fill stadiums today.
3 Metallica
The Black Album Changes Heavy Music Forever
A band taking their material into a more commercially viable direction is seldom an honest endeavor, but Metallica's wave of popularity came on their . After taking thrash as far as it could possibly go on the sprawling ...And Justice For All, Metallica went completely in the opposite direction. It was time for less is more. But make no mistake, The Black Album crafts songs around some of the biggest riffs ever played on guitar.
"Enter Sandman" is a song that brought Metallica to the masses so emphatically that its iconic riff and chorus are still played every single Sunday of the NFL season. "Sad But True," "Wherever I May Roam" and "The Unforgiven" put the band into arenas and then stadiums. This heavy metal classic spent over 10 years on the Billboard 200 and a band "trying to make their Black Album" became the de facto description for any metal band attempting mainstream success for about 20 years. Even songs that barely get mentioned like "The God That Failed," "The Struggle Within" and "My Friend Of Misery" are true 10/10 heavy metal classics you need to listen to.