In 1991,
Metallica
crashed into the mainstream with their fifth, self-titled album, sometimes known as
The Black Album
due to its sparse black album cover. The 12-song record represented a significant change in style for the band, from heady thrash to more commercially digestible forms of metal, and over the years it became one of the best-selling albums of all time.
The Metallica Blacklist
is an ambitious tribute to
's best-loved material, collecting four hours of a wide range of artists covering the songs that made up the album. The 53 different interpretations of
Black Album
tracks include faithful metal renditions (
White Reaper
's chugging take on "Sad But True" is especially true to form), spiritual jazz (
Kamasi Washington
's spacy grooves on "My Friend Misery"), indie rock reworkings (
Phoebe Bridgers
' especially delicate reading of "Nothing Else Matters" and
St. Vincent
's hard-edged electro-rock version of "Sad But True" stand out), drum-n-bass remixes, and many, many other stylistic variations. ~ Fred Thomas