The band Slash called “the pinnacle” of hard rock
What is hard rock aside from a burger-serving tourist trap? Well, it’s not easy to say, but if the loose genre had a family tree, then Slash would be somewhere near the centre. The top hat-sporting guitarist has a style, right down to the array of creased leather jackets in his cupboard, that personifies the harder style of rock that emerged, potentially, with The Beatles’ ‘Helter Skelter’ in 1968.
After that Promethean rally cry of rock ‘n’ roll of a more frenzied disposition, the genre continued to embolden its stance. With more studs and leather than a boot room, the likes of Uriah Heep, Nazareth and Kiss came to define the heavier side of rock aesthetically as much as they did musically. Typified by a percussive form of musicality, Slash wagers that the genre finally found its peak in Metallica.
“I think any Metallica album is a given for a hard rock/metal record collection,” he told Spin. “They are the pinnacle of that style of music, and they were among the first bands to revolutionize that particular style and sound. But the Black Album crossed over in a way that made them a household name. They achieved that while maintaining their sonic integrity, songwriting and attitude”.
Arriving in 1991, Metallica’s fifth album, the Black Album, saw the band knuckle down in a studio for a whopping eight-month span, nailing a sound that they had been angling for during their life on the road up until that point. It has since spent over 500 weeks in the charts and edges its way towards 40million copies sold, making all the hours and arguments in the studio well worth it for the band.
For Slash, the key triumph of the record lies in that commerciality. “They took their signature style and recorded an album that became universally accessible, but still fucking cool,” the Guns N’ Roses shredder said. “That is no small feat and maybe something that artists like Metallica might not even want to do. But on this record, it happened for them. The legacy of the Black Album will live on forever.”
It is that final decree that truly testifies it as a pinnacle. Hard rock is often seen as more of a short-term fad than the more traditional rock ‘n’ roll that spawned it. So loose is the genre’s tenets that it can quickly become clubbed in with the hair music side of things, often derided as the showy product of MTV, where substance subsided in favour of financable flamboyance.
There is an argument, as put forward by the likes of Ronnie James Dio, that certain fractions of music at that stage became anything but timeless. Still, if you ask Slash, he certainly thinks Metallica achieved that feat with the Black Album.
At its heart, there is a blues-iness to the album. With great sincerity, the band poured a heavy load into the record, and perhaps that is where its hard rock comes from.
