In case you forgot or were not alive, the late 1990s was a time when every Metal record label was jumping on the bandwagon of trend-hopping and hunting for the next “big thing” mostly Nu Metal or Nirvana’s take on pre-Grunge revival of Punk vibes. With almost no websites yet, pundits at music magazines, radio, and MTV, had declared metal dead (many bands would say otherwise, all the while the underground excelled like never before with stellar releases.
Nearly every facet of Metallica’s nearly 43-year career has been explored in zines, magazines, message boards, websites, blogs, vlogs, social media, and AOL (and other) messenger chats but first in drunken huddled conversations with friends in bars, parking lots, and hang spaces. From humble beginnings came the now fully not humble biggest band in the world in 2023.
By 1992, Metal was all but on its knees. Traditional bands had become dinosaurs and previously popular scenes were burnt out. There were exceptions, of course. Slayer were playing arenas, Metallica had global domination in their sights, death metal was approaching its peak and across northern Europe, black metal was literally rising from the ashes of burned churches. But for the rest of the world, grunge and other alternative scenes were the new kings, all drawing inspiration from the bands they were replacing but without any of that old fashioned baggage. Continue reading