Black Album review

Metallica go mainstream with this one. Alot of Metallica fans at the time when the album was released hated it due to the fact they hired Bob Rock as their new producer who is known to overproduce and polish albums too much and is responsible for selling out some Metal/hard rock bands like Motley Crue,Bon Jovi and The Cult. MetallicA have completely abandoned their thrash metal roots which I guess wasn't a bad thing since they wanted to prevent themselves from being labelled a 1 dimensional basic thrash metal band and wanted to experiment what they had to offer. Ok this album may not hold a candle to the albums they recorded before when it comes to songwriting and how its produced however it's the first Metallica album to have Jason Newsted's basslines since their album before this one ...And Justice For All didn't have any bass lines and it was like Newsted was not on the album at all. The main features of this album I don't like is that the song writing is mediocre if compared to their previous albums since Bob Rock changed some of the lyrics and it's also too polished and overproduced. The worst song with the worst songwriting would have to be My Friend of Misery which had a good bassline and a great riff to it but the song got ruined with extremely lame lyrics. But So What! There are some essential Metallica songs on this album that Bob Rock didn't manage to wreck like Sad But True, Through the Never, Holier than Tho and The God had Failed. Kirk Hammet even though he's one of the most overated guitarists in Metal has some of his best guitar solos on this album songs like Holier than tho.Struggle within and Through the Never are great examples. The songs they started playing live which are mostly Enter Sandman, Sad But True, Nothing else Matters and Where Ever I may Roam sound ten times better especially between the years (1994-1999) when they started tuning their guitars down and sound more raw and not so polished like they do on the album.
This is probably the last great album they'll ever do since they started following trends instead of leading them in years to come especially with their recent unlistenable album St Anger which sounds more like a watered down version of SOAD than a classic Metallica album. I recommend this album to mainstream rock fans and die hard Metallica fans but thrash metal purists would however hate this album and cringe if they listened to it due to the polished sound.