The only Metallica song to reach the US top 10
Since the 1990s, Metallica has seemed much bigger than the genre that birthed them. Though each member has worn their metal credentials proudly on their chests, some of their best material comes from when they twist their usual formula inside out, with The Black Album giving them some of their biggest hits off the strength of their ballads like ‘Nothing Else Matters’. For a certified Diamond album, though, Metallica has only ever seen the top ten in the US once.
Granted, it would be difficult for the old-school version of Metallica to get any spot on the top of the charts. For the first half of their career, Metallica’s habits as a thrash band gave them some of the most hard-edged songs in their discography, often spanning over six minutes to cram every riff they could think of into the track. Although the band could have cared less about radio back in the day, it wasn’t until ‘One’ that their music began to turn a corner.
Despite being over seven minutes, the tale of a man weathered and worn out by war and losing all his limbs resonated with people on MTV, becoming one of the band’s first major videos ever made. Shot in black and white, the film provided a sharp contrast to what the rest of the metal scene was doing at the time, with half of them trading in their licks for mile-high hair and lavish videos.
By the time Metallica worked with producer Bob Rock, they had finally found a sound that could work on radio, with classics like ‘Enter Sandman’ and ‘Sad But True’ becoming fixtures on classic rock radio. For the mainstream, though, Metallica wouldn’t get their breakthrough until one album later.
To usher in their new Load era, ‘Until it Sleeps’ was a haunting piece of melodrama, as James Hetfield sings about an unknown force that keeps eating away at him. Though the song has a few things in common with the previous ballad, ‘The Unforgiven’, the metaphor Hetfield presented was enough to garner major attention, peaking at number ten on the US Singles charts. While the song dominated the rock charts, this would be their only time working their way into the Billboard charts for the rest of their career.
For all of the new fans they had earned, Metallica fans were not impressed, thinking their favourite band had officially sold themselves out and were trying to pander to the lowest brand of music fan. Even with years gone by since the Load era, the fanbase still has an intense hatred for certain songs while loving some of the deeper cuts.
Since ‘Until it Sleeps’ got most of its power out of being a ripoff of ‘The Unforgiven’, the band only saw it best to give the Black Album track a proper sequel, with the follow-up ReLoad featuring the major single ‘The Unforgiven II’. The band would never get away from the metal genre with a name like Metallica, but this was a sign that things would go in some strange directions.
