Every Metallica album ranked from worst to best
At the dawn of the 1980s, metal was going through a transitionary period. After the New Wave of British heavy metal took the entire world by storm, there were acts that wanted something heavier than the hair metal songs being played all over the radio. Metal was bubbling up from the underground, and Metallica ushered in the new era of thrash metal.
Over the course of their career, Metallica revitalised metal for a new generation, bringing the heaviness and speed of punk and writing some of the most energetic metal music ever created. After their debut Kill Em All, the rest of their scene followed suit, with Anthrax and Slayer arriving not too far behind.
When talking about the best of Metallica, there is a definite pecking order. No band can be going that strong without a few misses, and Metallica have run the gamut from the greatest albums of all time to albums you’d never want to hear again.
Despite not every album gelling with their audience, Metallica never stepped in the same shit twice. The band are always content to do what they want to do, and that means making whatever music that their heart desires. And with a new album on the way, this is the running order where most of these albums stack up.
Metallica albums ranked from worst to best:
11. St. Anger (2003)
At the beginning of the 2000s, Metallica were not in the best position. After coming off of the Napster debacle, the band were in limbo when James Hetfield left midway through one of their albums to go to rehab. While they were back on the right track with the help of therapy, nothing could have saved what happened with St. Anger.
Although the band were using these songs to vent their frustrations, anger does not always lead to good metal music. While some of these songs feel like the beginnings of decent Metallica tracks like ‘Frantic’, half of this record is kneecapped by the production, including Lars Ulrich’s abhorrent choice to use a snare like a trash can lid.
Since the band are vulnerable on this record, all of their shortcomings bubble up to the surface, making for some of the most ear-grating songs of their career, like ‘Purify’ and ‘Dirty Window’. St. Anger needed to be made to save the band’s career, but there’s no question that this is the worst thing that they ever pressed to plastic.
10. Hardwired…to Self Destruct (2016)
In the wake of the 2010s, Metallica were back to sounding like themselves again. The past few years had been about making Metallica work for different audiences, and it finally felt like we had started on the right track again. Vintage Metallica always sounds good, but too much of it can be a bad thing sometimes.
That’s not to say that there’s anything offensively bad on Hardwired…to Self Destruct. The band are still in prime form, but the number of songs on this album makes the experience feel a lot longer than it actually is. Stretching it out into a double album doesn’t do it any favours, putting some top-tier Metallica tracks like ‘Spit Out the Bone’ next to songs that feel by the numbers by their standards like ‘Halo on Fire’.
While the production feels a lot cleaner this time around, the teeth behind the guitars never rise to Metallica standards all that often, making for a record that feels like it never picks up proper steam. Metallica albums always leave you with a strong reaction, but this is about as close as you get to a generic project that they’ve released.
9. Load (1996)
Success can almost be as scary as failure. When Metallica released The Black Album, they earned a whole new stripe of fans who identified more with the hard rock side of their sound than the hardcore thrash elements. So like any good businessman, Metallica gave the people what they wanted with Load.
Although this is ranked fairly low, Metallica did at least try to expand their horizons, with some slower material on ‘Mama Said’ and spreading out their ballads on songs like ‘Bleeding Me’ or the southern fried ‘Ronnie’. For a band that prided themselves on thrash, the songs on here are a lot slower than before, going more for a mid-tempo groove.
Since the album is one of the longest Metallica projects to date, it gets monotonous listening to the same mellow groove from beginning to end. The Metallica of old was still here, but if you were to shave off a handful of tracks, this album would have been a worthy follow-up to The Black Album.
7. Death Magnetic (2008)
By the end of the 2000s, many thrash fans were concerned that Metallica had officially lost it. The sting of St. Anger was still fresh in everyone’s minds, and any rumblings of a new record were kept to a minimum. When they went back into the studio one more time, Metallica gave thrash fans what they had wanted since the ‘80s.
There’s hardly an ounce of fat on Death Magnetic, as the band take their old tropes and twist them with Rick Rubin’s help on ‘All Nightmare Long’ and ‘Broken Beat and Scarred’. Despite the kickass songs, the only thing holding this album back is the production, being made during the loudness wars and sounding like something is wrong with your speakers when listening to it.
There are also a handful of times where the riffs get a bit monotonous again, like the repetition on ‘The End of the Line’, but those are just subtle nitpicks. Even though not every song is a slam dunk, it’s worth it if it means getting a track like ‘The Day That Never Comes’.
6. ReLoad (1997)
After the reception of Load, Metallica had an interesting decision to make. They could either roll over and do more of the slow, plodding songs that they had already worked on, or they could go back to their thrash roots and make something that was a lot more familiar to their metal fanbase. And when ReLoad came out, fans found out they had chosen neither option.
Once the album kicked off with a song like ‘Fuel’, fans got the impression that the band were going back to classic metal. On further review, the rest of the album is a lot more eclectic than its predecessor, having a greater focus on different genres like stoner rock, alternative, and even folksy tendencies on ‘Low Man’s Lyric’.
Although the band recycle some of their old riffs on tracks like ‘Devil’s Dance’, the majority of the record shows Metallica dipping their toes into different sounds, like the progressive-leaning ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ and the punkish attitude behind ‘Prince Charming’. The Load pair of albums might have been a mixed bag for fans, but ReLoad is one of the few musical sequels that’s better than the original.
5. And Justice For All (1988)
At the end of 1986, Metallica were lost in the woods. The death of Cliff Burton was not going to be easy to recover from, and the next thing they would release would be defined by his absence. Although Jason Newsted did a respectable job filling Burton’s shoes for the better part of a decade, his contributions are muted on his first step up to the plate.
As an inside joke, the rest of the band haze Newsted by turning his bass all the way down on And Justice For All, which makes the entire record sound thin by comparison. Instead of the savage attack, you got from the past Metallica projects, the songs sound thin and dry, almost like you’re listening to the demo versions of these songs.
When you separate the production job, this is the logical next step for Metallica, having some of their most progressive songs and expanding the tracks to goliath proportions, and even getting a hit out of it with the first version of ‘One’. While the songs were incredibly tight from back to front, the production job is what led them to rock and roll grandeur just one album later.
4. Kill Em All (1983)
Every rock band has to start somewhere, and Metallica were no exception. The band had been playing up and down the San Francisco Bay Area, and a trip to New York City secured them a record deal with startup MegaForce Records. When it came time to record, Metallica sounded like they were ready for war on Kill Em All.
Although the production on this album might be a bit amateurish, that’s not a bad thing at all. Being influenced by the likes of Motorhead and the Misfits, this is the kind of round-around-the-edges sound that the band thrived on, giving you a snapshot of their live shows from around the same time on ‘Seek and Destroy’ and ‘The Four Horsemen’.
Despite not sounding the greatest, the band were firing on all cylinders on this project and were turning in some of the best thrash metal they knew, which would grow into a movement once the rest of the metal world caught up. There are cleaner Metallica records, and there are heavier Metallica records, but on this project, the band never sounded hungrier.
3. Ride the Lightning (1984)
According to Kirk Hammett, Ride the Lightning was everything that Metallica wanted to do on Kill Em All with the proper production style. Although the band had already been honing their craft night after night, you would have sworn they had matured by ten years when listening to this album.
Since the band had been recording their live act on the first album, this was the first time they got to experiment in the studio, bringing in crystal clean production and having the closest thing to a ballad thus far on ‘Fade to Black’. Outside of the soft moments, songs like ‘Creeping Death’ and ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ have some of the best riffs of the band’s career, making you want to headbang every time you hear them.
The soundscapes get even crazier on the final song, ‘The Call of Ktulu’, a lengthy instrumental that leaves you in a trance during every single section. Metallica were fully formed at this point, but the end of this album shows you that they hadn’t even begun to impress us yet.
2. The Black Album (1991)
When the tour for And Justice For All wrapped up, the band realised they needed some guidance on the next record. After playing some of the most complex thrash metal ever made, the band were looking to make simpler songs by comparison, deciding to strip things back to the heart of old-school metal. Enter: Bob Rock.
While Rock was originally supposed to be the mixer for the album, he was convinced that the band hadn’t committed their live sound to tape. Since Rock was responsible for classics from Bon Jovi, The Black Album gave us the best of both worlds, spanning rock classics like ‘Enter Sandman’, thrash mayhem on ‘Through the Never’, and mellow balladry on ‘Nothing Else Matters’.
The band were lenient to Rock’s suggestions at first, but when they let their guard down, the world was waiting at their feet. Once the singles came out, The Black Album became one of the biggest albums of all time, being one of the few metal albums to have achieved Diamond certification. The thrash purists may have cried sellout, but there’s a song for every stripe of metal fan on this record.
1. Master of Puppets (1986)
If Metallica’s music had to be boiled down into a few categories, what would they be? Well, it would normally be songs that have fast tempos, clean sections, and usually feel like a journey every time you listen to them. Everyone has that style of song in their head, but that description can describe every track on Master of Puppets.
After dialling in their chops opening for metal giants, the band were in their creative sweet spot on this album. Standing at just eight tracks, every song could be considered a classic, going from the drug-induced Hell of the title track to getting into the mind of a mentally unstable person on ‘Welcome Home (Sanitarium)’.
Even with its core thrash sound, there are some songs that take the band one step further, like when they depict a battle scene on ‘Disposable Heroes’ and offer up metal’s answer to classical music with Burton’s masterpiece ‘Orion’. Metallica have had many missteps throughout their career, but in terms of unadulterated metal, this is the closest that the band ever came to perfection.
