10 Perfect Rock Albums That Everyone Hated Making

10. The Black Album - Metallica

There are normally two camps of fans when talking about Metallica's Black Album. For as much as they may have positioned themselves as the kings of thrash metal, this was the record that made them one of the biggest rock bands in the world and pissed off a good portion of their fanbase to no end. The band did have a vision to get more accessible though, and they were put through the ringer once they chose Bob Rock as their producer.

Being much more involved with pop metal acts like Bon Jovi and Motley Crue, Rock wasn't shy when whipping them into shape, putting the drums in the right place to make them sound massive and insisting that the band play the song live in the studio whenever they were tracking it. Although Bob has talked about getting the most out of James Hetfield's voice on a song like Nothing Else Matters, he wasn't exactly subtle about when he thought something was crap, including one meeting where he got Kirk Hammett so worked up that he improvised the now iconic solo on the Unforgiven.

By the time that the sessions wrapped, Lars Ulrich even went on record saying that he never wanted to see Bob Rock again, only to have him work on achieving the best sounds Metallica ever made throughout the rest of the '90s. Compared to the rest of Metallica's records, this became the one album that translated what the band was able to do live onto a record for the first time.