Metal has always been somewhat on the fringes of the norm when it comes to the charts. Sure, many people know names like Black Sabbath and might even be able to sing a couple of their riffs, but no one in their right mind was going to buy the latest surefire hit from them when they were putting together tunes for a party in the 1970s. The genre would take a long time before becoming a household name, but it had to go through a few awkward growth spurts first.

While the genre’s genesis started with bands like Sabbath and the heavy sections of Led Zeppelin’s material, things started to fracture slightly in the 1980s. Everyone could still respect the importance of a killer riff in the right context, but the true schism happened when the truly heavy bands went underground and the Sunset Strip became dominated by glittery rock and roll acts posing as heavy metal.

Although some genuine talent emerged from that scene at the time, heavy metal purists were always the ones blasting bands like Slayer and Metallica in their spare time. While the former clearly indicated everything that the genre stood for and what would most likely scare away everyone’s parents, the latter took the genre to new heights when they started making one hook after another in their prime.

Master of Puppets had enough power behind it, but with every song being nearly eight minutes, there was no way that they were going to get everything past the radio guidelines. All they needed was guidance to pair things down, and once Bob Rock was brought into the picture, the thrash legends had no idea how far they could take their music on 1991’s Black Album.