What’s Metallica’s most commercially successful song ever? If you assumed something from 1991’s mega-selling Black Album, maybe a Nothing Else Matters or an Enter Sandman, then you’re out. A true classic from their 80s glory era then? Master of Puppets? One? For Whom the Bell Tolls? Incorrect on all fronts.
When it comes to pure chart positions on both sides of the Atlantic, Metallica’s commercial peak is a song that fans waited five, long years for, was partially half-inched from a Soundgarden song, came with a promo directed by the bloke responsible for Smells Like Teen Spirit’s video and confused a great deal of their audience.
Due to the unprecedented success of The Black Album, Metallica were obliged to tour the world for an exhausting amount of time. The clamour for new material had become deafening by the middle of the 90s. Just what would the biggest metal band in the world do to follow up this gargantuan albatross?
Work on what would become the sixth Metallica album began in early 1994 in the same way as usual: with James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich jamming in Ulrich’s basement. When they emerged, they did so to a very different rock scene to the one they left behind, and Metallica were opening themselves up to a whole new bunch of sonic influences.
When asked about what he was listening to at that time by Guitar World, frontman James Hetfield spoke of "some really lively stuff, like the Rocket From The Crypt records".
“The best guitar thing I’ve heard in a while is the new Radiohead album [OK Computer],” added guitarist Kirk Hammett, before name-checking David Bowie, The Fugees, Beck and Oasis as other favourites.
I was going for as lazy a feel as possible...turns out it was the last song we wrote and recorded from the album.
Lars Ulrich
Back when The Black Album had been released, alternative music was still a relatively underground curio; now it was the zeitgeist. By May 1995, the band were ready to enter The Plant Studios in California with producer Bob Rock. Fans didn’t know it at the time, but what was to become 1996’s Load was a far more rock-inspired, looser, bluesier-sounding record.
The final song to be written and recorded from the sessions was Until It Sleeps, a slow-burning, moody and atmospheric number with a massive chorus that showed a totally new side to the Four Horsemen.
“I was going for as lazy a feel as possible,” Ulrich told Modern Drummer in 1996. “What’s special about that song is that it’s the only one we’ve ever written that came out of a jam in the recording studio. We were warming up on something and I just started going into this pattern with the snare rolls and James started playing off that. Bob piped up on the headset and asked what we were doing...turns out it was the last song we wrote and recorded from the album.”
Initially, the song was called F.O.B.D. as it took direct inspiration from Soundgarden’s Fell On Black Days, even sharing the same time signature during the pre-chorus. Lyrically speaking, the song also had a similar tone to the more reflective and sombre nature of grunge and alternative rock.
“Until It Sleeps is the obvious one,” Hetfield reluctantly admitted to Rolling Stone in 1996 when asked if the recent passing of his father Virgil Lee Hetfield, after a two-year battle with cancer, had influenced his lyrics on Load.
Albeit heavily cloaked in metaphor, Hetfield had touched on the death of his mother, and his Christian Science upbringing, in previous Metallica songs. But these feelings were usually expressed by pure rage; Until It Sleeps showed a more fractured, introspective side to the heavy metal icon.
“I let him know there were no bad feelings,” Hetfield told Rolling Stone of his final days with his father. “I sorted out a lot of my anger in his departure. I know that he was proud that I was getting some of my thoughts out and not keeping them bottled up."
I know that my father was proud that I was getting my thoughts out and not keeping them bottled up.
James Hetfield
Hetfield credited the likes of Nick Cave, Tom Waits and, even though he “hated the music”, Leonard Cohen for his fresh approach to lyric writing.
The new Metallica sound also came with a new look. Hair infamously cut, eyeliner infamously daubed. Until It Sleeps was chosen as Load's first single, and with came it a video by Samuel Bayer, the man who directed clips for Ozzy Osbourne, Iron Maiden, Smashing Pumpkins, Hole, Blind Melon and, most famously, Nirvana for Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Bauer took inspiration from R.E.M.’s Losing My Religion video, bringing to life the paintings of thirteenth century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch that dealt with of the fall of man in a series of surreal concepts. It saw the band go full thespian: Hammett on a crucifix with eyes painted red, Hetfield smeared in black tar, Jason Newsted rolling about in mud, bare-chested, and Ulrich hissing and emoting in a feather boa. It was a million miles from the snotty, headbanging teens making Kill ‘em All.
Fans had waited five years to experience new Metallica material, but when they heard and saw Until It Sleeps, many were confused by the alien sound and the look of the band they loved.
Even Hetfield himself has since admitted he wasn’t entirely sure Metallica were doing the right thing.
“Image isn’t an evil thing to me, but if the image isn’t you, it doesn’t make much sense,” Hetfield later told Classic Rock, adding that he believed that Ulrich and Hammett were “after a U2 kind of vibe, Bono doing his alter-ego." "I couldn’t get into it," he admitted. "I would say at least half the pictures that were to be in the booklet, I yanked out.”
Ultimately, Kirk and Lars’ vision was vindicated when Until it Sleeps was released prior to Load on May 20, 1996, and shot up the charts.
Not only did the song peak at number five in both the US and the UK, their highest and joint highest position in both territories respectively, but it topped the charts in both Sweden and Australia.
Load came soon after, and its divisiveness is another long and fascinating story. But it’s a story that started with Until It Sleeps: the jam room roll of the dice that remains the most commercially successful single of Metallica’s career to this very day.
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