10 Hard Rock Albums Everyone Forgets About

When talking about an artists' collective body of work, covers albums really don't count in the long run. Unless you're someone like Johnny Cash and make your living off of making stellar covers, these end up feeling more like contractual obligations half the time, with the artists just farting out some borderline karaoke to get the job done. Metallica always did what they wanted though, and Garage Inc. brought everything back to where it started.

Before Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield even had legitimate songs under their belt, half of Metallica's setlist was already taking the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and making it even heavier back in the California clubs. After years of making stellar tracks of their own though, this record feels like Metallica returning the favor to those who influenced them, with half of the track listing on here being loving tributes to bands like Diamond Head and Black Sabbath. Even on songs that shouldn't work like Bob Seger's Turn the Page, Metallica still make it their own, replacing the horn line with Kirk Hammett's signature wah wah guitar.

The most important aspect of this project isn't even the fact that Metallica are playing these songs. If you look at a track like the medley Mercyful Fate, this was a way for them to expose this music to a whole different market, with fans getting into Mercyful Fate later down the line because of this song. Though they may have been known as sellouts at the time, Metallica never forgot the reasoning behind doing what they do: it's about sharing music as much as it is about playing it.