Metallica Super Band

By Peter Adams

Metallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California, formed in 1981. Founded when drummer Lars Ulrich posted an advertisement in a local newspaper, Metallica's line-up has primarily consisted of Ulrich, rhythm guitarist and vocalist James Hetfield, and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, while going through a number of bassists. Currently, the spot is held by Robert Trujillo. Metallica's early releases included fast tempos, instrumentals, and aggressive musicianship that placed them as one of the "big four" of the thrash metal subgenre alongside Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax during the genre's development into a popular style. The band achieved substantial commercial success with Metallica (1991), which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. With this release the band expanded its musical direction resulting in an album that appealed to a more mainstream audience. Metallica has released nine studio albums, two live albums, two EPs, twenty-four music videos, and forty-five singles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: XinXii
• Release date: May 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781304922342

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About Metallica

In the Eighties — when big hair and small ideas dominated heavy metal — Metallica's blend of brains and brawn gave the genre a much-needed charge. As their career wore on, the band's lyrics took on war, censorship, and other political issues metal didn't typically address, and the group sharpened their focus as songwriters, with singles like the horror-movie stomper Enter Sandman becoming huge rock anthems. Fans responded to in droves, buying six million copies of the group's fifth full-length album, Metallica, and elevating their previous LPs to platinum. In the process, grim-faced guitarist-singer James Hetfield became not only a hero for the nation's largest fraternity of misfits — suburban metalheads — but also a critically respected songwriter and bandleader. Metallica ended the decade as the biggest-selling rock act of the Nineties.

Hetfield and Lars Ulrich came from different worlds to form Metallica in the L.A. suburbs in 1981. Hetfield, whose father owned a trucking company and whose mother a light-opera singer, was raised in a strict Christian Science home. Ulrich, a recently transplanted Dane, had intended to become a professional tennis player like his father, Torben Ulrich. What the two teenagers shared was an interest in the gritty music of U.K. hard rockers Motorhead. Adding guitarist Dave Mustaine and bassist Ron McGovney, the band started writing songs and recording demo tapes. Metallica's lineup solidified after Clifford Lee Burton replaced McGovney in 1982,