Nobody expects Metallica to sing about having a good time. From the moment James Hetfield began writing, the band’s songs revolved around the darkest corners of the human psyche, telling people about the horrors of war in ‘One’ or getting stuck in cryogenic sleep in ‘Trapped Under Ice‘. While ‘Sad But True‘ should have been their darkest song yet, the band felt the first draft was far too optimistic.
After the end of the 1980s, the band needed to change their pace significantly to become adopted seriously as a metal mainstay. Despite Jason Newsted’s smooth introduction to And Justice For All, the album’s sound quality was poor.
Because they were all still grieving the loss of founding member Cliff Burton, the majority of the album featured Newsted’s bass pushed to the edge of the mix, sounding completely buried in the final mix. The band believed that Bob Rock was the only person who could help them get the most out of their sounds for the next record.
However, Rock was not going to hide his feelings about the songs he was working on. Throughout the process, Rock’s reputation grew for his extreme criticism of anything he deemed not working. He wanted to produce because no Metallica album did justice to their live performance.
To achieve a fresh sound, the band began pairing down their initial licks. The days of playing eight-minute exercises for what seemed like an eternity were over. A radio-friendly sheen, sounding more like rock and roll, replaced them. If ‘Enter Sandman‘ scared away a few fans, ‘Sad But True‘ gave the record the necessary edge.
Detuning the guitars to D makes the entire mix feel like a massive monster stomping across the speakers. Especially with the layers of guitars, Hetfield added. Even though the band found the right fit for the song, they admitted that the original version sounded completely different. It was unlike what they were used to.
When speaking with Classic Albums, Hetfield mentioned having several arguments about how the song should sound. He stated, “It was too fast. That was an excellent example of what tempo to play the song at. We had a lot of arguments about this because that riff sounded so happy when you played it. Even the vocals seemed rushed.”
Rather than having to keep up with their contemporaries by playing fast and heavy, the results sounded much more like a 1990s version of Black Sabbath, with the band returning to its signature heavy groove halfway through the recording. Metallica may have experimented with some new ideas this time around. However, that didn’t mean the heaviness had to end just because of a few good hard rock songs.
