10 Perfect Albums That Will Make You Love Metal

There's a good case that this is the one Metallica album that a good portion of Metallica fans don't like to talk about. In the midst of them turning over a new leaf in the '90s, fans were outraged that their favorite thrash band would have the guts to make a record like this, hooking up with a big name producer and making songs that might even get played on the radio. This is a list about getting people into metal though, and The Black Album might have given the genre the biggest boost it has ever seen.

Looking to go in a different direction and frustrated about not capturing their live sound in a studio setting, Metallica's choice to work with Bob Rock produced one of the best albums in metal history. Though there might not be any overarching narrative to these songs or anything, each one of them seems to take a small sample of what made metal so irresistible in the first place, like when they delve into softer territory on Nothing Else Matters while also showing us the darker side of that story on The Unforgiven.

Even if metalheads still have problems with this album, hearing a song like Sad But True should tell you all you need to know about a record like this. It's not supposed to be a record that is destined for the pop stations, but it's not trying to be either. Metallica had already been kings of the underground at this point, and it was about time they let their empire rise to the top.