Metallica (
James Hetfield,
Lars Ulrich,
Kirk Hammett and
Jason
Newsted) is a
band that has done a lot of good
heavy metal.
In my personal opinion, the best works of
the band can be found from their album Metallica, also known as The
Black Album (so named because of, duh, the cover. =)
The Black Album has many many great tunes that I can just describe
"classical": Enter Sandman, The Unforgiven, Nothing
Else Matters and Of Wolf And Man (The latter is, of course,
a very very personal choice =)
The other albums just aren't equally good. For example,
Master of Puppets has only one really good tune,
Welcome Home (Sanitarium), that seems to describe the plight of
the mentally ill but that actually describes the plight of
the users of Microsoft's operating systems. Listen to it
someday. It's obvious once you notice it. =)
The album has, in my opinion, one tune that also is pretty good,
Master of Puppets - but it's just... long. Apocalyptica's
version is better. As an another example, in my opinion the album
Ride the Lightning has only one really good tune and
it's instrumental - Call of Ktulu, but it really paints a good
Cthulhuesque picture...
Their earlier works are probably their greatest - and that shows,
because many groups have made new versions of only
those. The Finnish cello metal band's Apocalyptica has made
really good versions of the some tunes, clearly proving that while the
listeners of classical music often frown on listeners of lighter
music, even Metallica's music is beautiful in its essence. Some
people don't like the sound of electric guitar - but the music may be
very good in itself.
Oh yeah, and they're also involved in that Napster mess. But you
already knew that, right?