10 Perfect Rock Albums That Everyone Hated Making

It's practically any music fan's dream to have the life of a musician. Instead of the usual 9-5 job, all you have to do is show up and jam with your friends and make some of the best tunes you know how. When you look at it that way, every single record that you pump out should really be a labor of love...in theory.

As time goes on though, bands start to understand the labor of part of being a musician, having to summon creativity out of the blue and having tension rise up between the band members. For each of these records, the band was going through mayhem in the studio, butting heads with each other while also having to deal with the pressure from the label breathing down their neck. Even though the actual story behind these albums sounds like a nightmare, it's honestly a miracle that they managed to sound this good.

While the band members may not have been in the greatest headspace during the production, you wouldn't hear it in these songs, as every track plays off one another perfectly. The rock lifestyle can sometimes be a chore, but that's also when you might end up writing some of your best stuff. As it stands, these records are definitely masterpieces, and the musicians probably still have the scars to prove it.

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.