Metallica began as a small time thrash metal outfit, chugging through songs about head-banging, the devil, and the urge to kill (so...typical heavy metal sh*t) with a feverishness previously unseen. And as the lead singer, all James Hetfield really had to do was grunt and snarl his way through the words, because most fans only really cared about the music and "the vibe." But once Metallica jumped ship and went for a more mainstream hard rock sound, Hetfield found himself facing the conundrum of actually learning how to sing. It, uh...it hasn't gone extremely well. It's not that he necessarily has a bad voice (and the hard rock genre is littered with much worse vocal stylings), but his frequent, much lampooned vocal tics make any Metallica song from 1991 onward impossible to listen to without laughing just a little bit at all those OOOOOOH-AAAAHS and YEAH-HEHS that he throws onto the end of every line.
