Top 5 Metallica Songs

 Metallica had been one of the biggest names in metal music since their arrival. The heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California is known for their fast tempos, instrumentals, aggressive musicianship that placed them as founding “big four” of thrash metal alongside megadeath, anthrax and slayer. The band earned a growing fan base when their third album Master of Puppets (1986), described as one of the most influential and “heavy” thrashes metal albums. Their album Metallica (also known as The Black Album) debuted at number one in ten countries, selling 650,000 units in the United States during it's first week.

Following are one of the most influential metallica tracks that made them such a big success:

1. Master of Puppets

Released in 1986 in the album with the same name, with original Metallica line-up, this song is in every Metallica fan made list. One of it's live performance in Seattle in 1989 is very powerful and enjoyable. The song as lead singer James Hetfield explained, "deals pretty much with drugs". It was also Metallica's late bass guitarist cliff Burton's favorite track of the album.
The song is Metallica's most played song, performed over 1400 times. Song is also noted for it's extended use of down-picking and long instrumental section.

2. Fade to Black

The version of this song that i'm sharing is the one in Sydney 2006. Though James made lyrical error in the beginning verse but the energy throughout made it one of the best live performance of this song. 

The song came out in 1984 as the first single of their second studio album Ride the Lightening. Song's lyrics deals with suicidal feelings. It begins with an acoustic guitar introduction and becomes progressively heavier as the song goes on. It was band's first ballad and was also the last song Metallica performed live with former bassist Jason Newsted.

3. Nothing Else Matters

James hetfield wrote this song while on the phone with his then girlfriend. Holding phone with one hand he plucked four open strings which eventually made up the first two bars of the song.

The lyrics , which talk about being "so close, no matter how far" were also dedicated to his girlfriend indicating the bond they shared even when hetfield was on tour. The song is covered over 40 times by various artists.

4. One

"One" was written by metallica's principle composer James hetfield and Lars Ulrich in 1987 and released in 1989 as the forth and the final single from the album, ..and justice for all. Song begins with a series of effects containing sounds from battle feild with a clean tone guitar intro by James hetfield before kirk Hammett comes in with a clean tone over the top solo. The song speeds up after ulrich's drums comes in continues after each chorus. When the guitars become heavy and distorted there is a second solo by Hammett. Lyrics cut out and the song becomes more heavy and distorted until the "machine gun" guitar build up.

5. Enter Sandman

"Enter Sandman" evolves from a guitar riff that hammett wrote. It had three guitar tracks of the same riff played by hetfield to create a wall of sound. It was the first single from their immensely successful album Metallica and achieved gold certification for sales of more than 500,000 copies in United States.

Above listed are Metallica's most succesfull and critically acclaimed songs. Being a fan you can also come up with a list of your favorite Metallica tracks.