Hot Take 'em All: 'The Metallica Blacklist'
Reacting to heavy metal's event releases
In this edition of HTEA, Wolf Rambatz tackles The Metallica Blacklist, a 53-song compilation of Black Album covers by various artists released to streaming services on September 10 and physical on October 1.
What is your hastily written capsule review for The Metallica Blacklist?
At its best, the handful of creative covers on The Metallica Blacklist crackle with a newfound energy that, in most cases, never coursed through the turgid originals. At its worst…well…it’s Weezer at its most smirkingly irritating. Let’s dam the Rivers for a moment: Weezer aside, the pointlessly straight-ahead covers never aspire to be more than karaoke, albeit karaoke performed by needy popstars. That would normally be worth a few hatchet job chops for deferential laziness, but since it was announced that all Blacklist profits go to charities, it’s hard to complain too vociferously about anything here, even though “here,” to be clear, is a 53-song compilation that one could easily confuse for a massive monument to Metallica’s overwhelming hubris. (That said, while I’m sure everyone’s heart is in the right place, “profits” always seem like an intentionally vague qualifier for this kind of thing.) Since the philanthropic intentions lessen the offensiveness of the more tossed off entries and questionable existence of the project as a whole, you’re left to only consider the good. And, I gotta say, there’s a lot more good than I expected coming in. What could’ve been another boondoggle for a band more than familiar with baffling disasters in its post-imperial period turns out to be the best thing with the Metallica name on it since Garage Inc.
What is the Blacklist’s best moment?
I’m pretty amused by the four-disc CD version being $20 cheaper than the digital download. As someone who still moves a CD rack from place to place at the expense of their back muscles and considers digging through the dollar bin a sport, I support it.
In all seriousness, I’m surprised that anyone in the Metallica camp knows this many artists and was willing to build such a diverse roster of game contributors, not to mention keeping the can-you-turn-down-the-bass? meddling to a minimum. It feels like all of the coverers had artistic freedom to do what they wanted, for better or for worse. Considering how staid and stale the original Black Album now sounds, that freedom is key to making the “better” way better than it should be.
I haven’t listened to the Black Album, front to back, since…jeeze…1996 or thereabouts, right when I was coming to the terms with the fact that there was going to be a Good Metallica and a Bad Metallica. That’s to say, I haven’t listened to any of these songs by choice in a long time. That has turned the Black Album into white noise, songs that are immediately recognizable and thus function as little more than emotional cues for marketers, Mandatory Metallica radio programmers, wrestlers, and sports stadium PA DJs. In turn, my brain relegates the songs to the background, like the sound of an office HVAC whirring to life or lawnmowers droning away on a weekend. Through unrequested repetition, these songs’ juices were squeezed out long ago, leaving 12 rinds that may have the fuzzy mold of nostalgia growing on them but are otherwise empty. Ubiquitous, yes, but no longer powerful, if they were ever powerful at all. They’re as close as any metal that’s not Def Leppard is going to get to wedding song status.
So, even with an all-star cast of critic darlings and hyper-creative popsters, can’t say I had much hope that anything on the Blacklist was going to transcend the originals because…well…bad songs rarely turn into good songs, do they? It felt like every artist was set up to fail, maybe succeeding at ballparking a sensation that was half-lifed to nothingness 29 years ago, but that’s it.
For a few tracks, I was right. And then Rina Sawayama blew the doors off, maximalizing a song that was already maximalized for mass consumer consumption. And, holy shit, it works. “Enter Sandman” now belongs to Sawayama mainly because her boundless charisma overrides it. What was awkward about the original, the clumsiness of a thrash band trying to be a pop band while keeping one foot in AC/DC-derived hard rock, has been solved by reprogramming “Sandman” to be pure pop, which is where it should’ve been all along. “Sandman” finally has a distinct voice and point of view, something that it never had when it was a little more than an IPO. I can’t overstate how incredible it is that Sawayama’s “Sandman” has any spark. No one would ever choose to cover that song due to its three-decade omnipresence, but the Blacklist gives Sawayama license to let loose on one of the biggest and most banal songs in pop metal, transforming it into something that sounds more natural and confident than it ever has before. I’m not sure “Sandman” is good — the lyrics, stumbling riffs, and ye-yeah!isms are still goofy as hell — but this is as not-bad as it’s going to get. Even if Sawayama’s rescue mission was the sole highlight, it almost justifies the entire endeavor.
To that end, whenever these artists let their own voices reshape the material, holy shit, it works. OFF!’s rollicking “Holier Than Thou” rips way harder, especially with OFF! drummer Justin Brown sticking it to Lars Ulrich by playing every fill possible. “Wherever I May Roam” is similarly enlivened by Jon Pardi’s fiddle-heavy redo, suggesting that Load/Reload could be improved immeasurably by handing it over to country artists. Any track that has been twangified pretty much works, in fact, from Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit’s shuffling “Sad But True” to Chris Stapleton killing himself for “Nothing Else Matters.”
Even when the covers don’t dramatically re-energize the originals, it’s refreshing hearing artists going for it and rerouting the destinations. Mexican Institute of Sound, La Perla, Gera MX’s “Sad But True” and J Balvin’s “Wherever I May Roam” are delightful and make me pine for an alternate timeline where sampling wasn’t a legal quagmire. Moses Sumney and Kamasi Washington both make an impassioned case that even the Black Album’s duds deserve a second chance, giving each respective reclamation absolute socks. Sumney and Washington come out the other side sounding like musical geniuses, because, of course, they are. That’s what a good cover can do: energizing/fortifying the original while raising/consecrating the profile of the coverer. That the Blacklist does any of that, let alone so much of it, is genuinely surprising. Flaws and all, this is the best case scenario.
What is the worst?
Weezer. It’s Weezer. It has always been Weezer. I burned this comparison on Senjutsu and I wish I didn’t since it’s far more applicable for Weezer’s cover of “Enter Sandman:” This is the MCU as a song, right down to its Comic Book Guy-sneering, fan service solo that quotes from fucking “Buddy Holly.” Guh. The fact that Rivers Cuomo isn’t being tried in the Hague for crimes against humanity is the most damning evidence that the United Nations has been a failure. The Blue Album, much like high school, is worse than you remember. Pinkerton is cringey, sexist garbage. Fuck Weezer.
There are other bad covers — Portugal. The Man’s “Don’t Tread On Me” is community theater from hell, Cage the Elephant’s “Unforgiven” is like playing hacky sack in a university’s free speech zone — but nothing rises to Weezer’s deadly storm surge of insufferableness. Instead, the next most annoying thing about the Blacklist is how many artists opted for perfunctory American Idol renditions. Mac DeMarco proves he can do a B- cover of “Enter Sandman” and that’s…it? What’s the point, Mac? Is it novel? No. It’s 2021. There are no genres. While I get that there’s an impulse to prove one’s versatility, I’d rather artists translate these songs to their styles than try to be awarded hard rock bona fides they’re going to shed immediately anyway.
Worse, when some artists decide to take a chance, it’s via ultra safe avenues that are creative dead ends. Sam Fender is probably good at whatever Sam Fender does, but I can’t wait until we, as a society, have moved on from shitty dirge/torch song covers. Fender’s “Sad But True” weeper isn’t a moving juxtaposition, it’s the sleepy background track for a slomo trailer teasing the next braindead superhero tentpole.
Still, the absolute worst thing about the Blacklist is the sequencing. You get each Black Album track in rounds of multiple covers, back-to-back. Six “Enter Sandman”s batting leadoff, seven “Sad But True”s in the two-hole. You end up comparing everything against each other, a middle-manager-with-an-irrepressible-boner-for-Ayn Rand’s idea of a “fun” listening experience. While I agree with the 12(!) artists that, yes, nothing else matters, it’s rough hearing “Nothing Else Matters” after “Nothing Else Matters” after “Nothing Else Matters.” I don’t particularly care for My Morning Jacket’s mom-sweater version, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t a breath of fresh air after seven samey downers, despite those seven samey downers being among the best performed songs of the bunch. What a disservice.
If each of these four discs was its own bizarro Black Album, it would’ve been far more effective. Instead, as sequenced, it’s like doing battle with a persistent earworm for stretches that can last as long as an hour. You may listen to these songs again, but you’ll never listen to the Blacklist again.
Why do you think the Blacklist exists?
I don’t think Metallica puts much thought into anything it does because it doesn’t need to. It’s still the biggest metal band in the world despite, you know [*waves hands wildly*], everything. I think the Blacklist was made because someone within Metallica, the larger mechanistic business, thought it’d be cool to make.
Sure, it’s fun to think of the Blacklist being made for other reasons: a tribute to a 16x platinum album that is older than a lot of these artists; a hilariously craven attempt at backdooring these songs into the Great American Songbook; a “how do you do, fellow kids” Hail Mary toss praying to refresh Metallica’s relevance, especially with a winnable bro-in-a-hat country audience; a Big Brother altruistically introducing up-and-comers to its massive fanbase and allowing the social media hungry to get some free views; a scheme to earn plaudits for a charitable undertaking while exerting zero effort and dumping the work onto the backs of younger artists; and on and on and on, choose your own adventure. The best what-if I’ve heard is that some Def Jam’s How to be a Player shit befell Metallica where the band went crazy flexing with the invites only to have everyone show up at the party. “Wait, everyone responded??? Oh no. Oh noooooooooooo.” But, yeah, nothing about Metallica’s past decisions speak to any sort of forethought or understanding of the implications of its actions. The Blacklist exists because the Blacklist exists. That’s it.
Can you construct your own Black Album out of Blacklist tracks?
Oof. As previously stated, it confuses me greatly that the Blacklist’s tracks aren’t distributed evenly among artists to guard against having 12 “Nothing Else Matters”es and one “Of Wolf And Man.” I mean, sure, it’s not like anyone went into this with something to prove, Miley Cyrus’s all-hands-on-deck cover aside, so the stakes were low. It’s a lark. The mandate was probably, and rightly, YOLO, cover whatever the hell you want. But, that does make it hard for nerds like me to feel satisfied when we cull the herd, Use Your Illusion-style, down to a single album as we nerds are compelled to do.
Whatever. Here’s my version of the Blacklist that I’m calling the “Whitelist,” which is the best firewall joke you’ll read today, thank you very much.
Rina Sawayama - “Enter Sandman”
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - “Sad But True”
OFF! - “Holier Than Thou”
Moses Sumney - “The Unforgiven”
Jon Pardi - “Wherever I May Roam”
SebastiAn - “Don’t Tread On Else Matters”
The HU - “Through the Never”
Phoebe Bridgers - “Nothing Else Matters”
Goodnight, Texas - “Of Wolf and Man”
Imelda May - “The God That Failed”
Kamasi Washington - “My Friend of Misery”
Rodrigo y Gabriela - “The Struggle Within”
Additional notes:
If two or more songs were close to winning their respective round, I prioritized playlist flow over quality. Mexican Institute of Sound, La Perla, Gera MX’s “Sad But True” and Tomi Owó’s “Through the Never” were superior to what I eventually picked, but I think my running order flows better as an album.
Goodnight, Texas and Rodrigo y Gabriela got in because they were the sole submissions for either song. I thought Goodnight, Texas was going to dip into some Mumford bullshit, but its gloopy folksiness, while bad, thankfully cleared that low bar.
I was going to flunk SebastiAn for failing to follow the assignment’s directions, but the other “Don’t Tread on Me”s were so wretched that I had no other choice but to tap it for inclusion.
Tracks 6 - 8 turns into a bit of a lull in this context, so it made sense for me to pick Phoebe Bridgers’s comparatively shorter “Nothing Else Matters” even though I think Stapleton’s epic “Nothing Else Matters” is a career highlight.
Imelda May’s “The God The Failed” has the kind of arena-rootsy riffs that would open a YouTube crossfit video, but IDLES is annoying. I have a theory that the closer something is to something you like, the greater its annoyance potential. Like, PG Roxette’s Mute Records-ass cover doesn’t bug me that badly because I don’t listen to the modern equivalent of that very often. I listen to a lot of noise rock, though. IDLES — on this cover at least, I’ve never heard the band otherwise — is not good at it. Therefore, it is annoying as hell.
This version of the Black Album is shorter than the actual Black Album. You’re welcome.
Final thoughts?
At this point, I think it’s clear that, post-Justice, Metallica is only good at playing other people’s songs and Bad Metallica songs are only tolerable when they’re played by other people. I mean, Metallica’s two best efforts in the past 30 years are different versions of covers albums. The coverer and the covered, those are the bright spots. That’s kind of dark. What other takeaway is there, though? Let’s talk about covers albums themselves, then.
Modern covers albums are never good simply due to their slap-dash natures, but they can be entertaining if the participants are willing to go for it even if that means showing their asses. The Blacklist reminds me a lot of 1994’s Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin in that it has the same highs and lows and Darrius Rucker. (I don’t need to write this but I will: Yes, cherry-picked Led Zeppelin hits are in a different galaxy, in terms of quality, than the Black Album.) Anytime an artist flips the script it’s a high (Stone Temple Pilot’s outstanding “Dancing Days”), even if it’s not good (Sheryl Crow’s unbearably sunny “D’yer Mak’er”), because it makes you reconsider the original. (Plant’s diminished, small-dog-yelping vocals on “D’yer Mak’er” bug the shit out of me, thanks for pointing that out, Sheryl.) These kinds of covers were the reaction videos of their time, a way to learn something new by hearing a song through someone else’s ears.
Anytime an artist resorts to a straight cover, however, it’s a low, even if that cover is competent (4 Non Blondes’ “Misty Mountain Hop”), because it only highlights that the coverer isn’t the covered. It doesn’t say or do anything. No one cares about these albums a week after they’re released, so you can go full Sawayama without fearing any sort of blowback. That is, you could do something because you’re allowed to do anything. No consequences! Instead, so many coverers choose to step into the shoes of the covered for a brief moment, like Hunter S. Thompson supposedly typing out The Great Gatsby word for word. Thompson didn’t release that shit, though.
Sure, some straight covers work when the artist applies their own voice to the original or when the original is close enough to a style that the coverer already pursues. Death’s “Painkiller.” Pig Destroyer’s “In the Meantime.” However, just by dint of those bands being 100 percent themselves on those covers, I’d argue they’re not “straight.” What irks me is when an artist crosses genres and plays in the style of the covered as a homage. Whenever, say, a pop singer does a hard rock cover solely to prove that they can, it’s boring because they’re playing to an audience of two, themselves and the artist to which they’re paying tribute. Can’t stand it. Stop with those covers. At least when Eighteen Visions covered “Paradise City” for Bring You to Your Knees: A Tribute to Guns 'N Roses, it added a really stupid breakdown at the end.
And that’s kinda it, the best thing a covers album can do is highlight which songs are nearly impossible to fuck up and which are actually bad. The many covers of Black Sabbath’s “Snowblind,” from Converge (In These Black Days) to System of a Down (Nativity in Black II), demonstrate that that song is bulletproof. You’d have to be awful to screw it up. Better yet, the bones are so good that it can withstand a wild reimagining. System of a Down’s cover is the best that band ever was and will be. That’s a testament to both Black Sabbath and System of a Down when it caught lightning in a bottle.
Conversely, the Blacklist proves, once and for all, that “The Unforgiven” and its many sequels suck ass. Moses Sumney works his ass off to salvage it. I am in awe of everything Sumney did. He earned my undying respect. But a bad song is a bad song. To that end, while it’s entertaining and way better than it has any right to be, the Blacklist reminds me that the Black Album is bad.
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