what year did metallica black album come out
Metallica (album) Metallica (commonly known as The Black Album) is the fifth studio album by American heavy metal band Metallica. Released on August 12, 1991 by Elektra Records, it received widespread critical acclaim and became the band's best-selling album. Metallica produced five singles that are considered to be among the band's best-known songs, which include "Enter Sandman", "The Unforgiven", "Nothing Else Matters", "Wherever I May Roam", and "Sad but True". "Don't Tread on Me" was also issued to rock radio shortly after the album's release, but the song did not receive a commercial single release. The album marked a change in the band's sound from the thrash metal style of the previous four albums to a slower one. Metallica promoted the album with a series of tours. In 2003, the album was ranked number 252 on Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums of all time.
Heavy metal music The origin of the term "heavy metal" in a musical context is uncertain. The phrase has been used for centuries in chemistry and metallurgy, where the periodic table organizes elements of both light and heavy metals (e.g., uranium). An early use of the term in modern popular culture was by countercultural writer William S. Burroughs. His 1962 novel The Soft Machine includes a character known as "Uranian Willy, the Heavy Metal Kid". Burroughs' next novel, Nova Express (1964), develops the theme, using heavy metal as a metaphor for addictive drugs: "With their diseases and orgasm drugs and their sexless parasite life forms—Heavy Metal People of Uranus wrapped in cool blue mist of vaporized bank notes—And The Insect People of Minraud with metal music".[87] Inspired by Burroughs' novels,[88] the term was used in the title of the 1967 album Featuring the Human Host and the Heavy Metal Kids by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, which has been claimed to be its first use in the context of music.[89] The phrase was later lifted by Sandy Pearlman, who used the term to describe The Byrds for their supposed "aluminium style of context and effect", particularly on their album The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968).[90]