The Path of Thorns

To start off my blog – the non-critic critic site for all music – I am going to start easy on myself.  I only have a vague idea of what I’m doing, so I might as well start with my favorite album of all time.  It has been for well over a decade, for its perfection, energy and emotion; Metallica’s Metallica, or “The Black Album.”

From its opening, “Enter Sandman”, through its ending with “The Struggle Within”, it’s one brilliantly well-crafted tale of angst, sadness, despair and ferocity.  Songs like “Sad But True” and “Holier Than Thou” are the essence of aggression in heavy metal, but it doesn’t lame out with a song that repeats the same thing.  I see it as a perfect puzzle of all of these emotions; all songs with similar feeling and blitzkrieg, but told differently each time.  No song sounds redundantly like any other on the album, a tough achievement for any artist.  It’s like twelve different puncture wounds with a dagger constructed with a perfectly-edged blade.  Softer stabs with storytelling, intense ballads like “The Unforgiven” and “Nothing Else Matters”, my favorite song of all time, go perfectly well with the darker bites of “My Friend of Misery” and “Of Wolf And Man.”

It’s like in Dexter, when the title character sees a perfect murder with a perfect, and in his eyes artistic, way of completing the act, he can only stand in admiration.  That’s how I feel about Metallica; simple without draining their creative intelligence, heavy without overdoing it like they had done a little to their predecessor …And Justice For All, and final without missing a single edge.  It’s the height of hard rock and heavy metal at its finest; true to its roots, but enjoyable for anyone and everyone.  A matchless record, and one of the best of all time.