10. Enter Sandman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD-E-LDc384 The most potent - and off-putting to thousands - left-turn in the band's history is that severe swerve from ...And Justice For All's progressive thrash sound to that of the condensed five-minute hard rock songs that would come to make up The Black Album - and the band's mainstream image. Sandman may be their Sweet Child o' Mine in terms of it being 'that song' that's always on the radio, but forgoing modern-day pop-tripe, if a song can even get to the stature of being overplayed in the first place, chances are there's something worth listening to over and over again - especially when it comes to rock and metal. Hammett has mentioned that the solos on the Black Album pretty much "wrote themselves" due to the general vibe of what they were going for, along with the idea of taking the complex arrangements of their older work and shortening them, so it's no surprise that this solo is one of the quintessential rock opuses of our time. From the fiery intro that rockets out of the gate to the wah-pedalled double string-bends that would come to define Metallica's 90s work, Sandman has the perfect mixture of energetic playing and learned composition, shot from the fingers of a man who was at the top of his game.