Savvy businessmen that they are, they also realized they needed to give hardcore fans who already owned all the covers a reason to purchase the new set - hence, the expansion of the Garage Days EP to the double-disc blowout Garage, Inc. By 1998, the band had understandably grown frustrated with this situation and decided to confront the problem head-on by reissuing all these rarities. This is Metallicaman signing off.For many years, Metallica's 1987 EP Garage Days Re-Revisited was the most sought-after item in their catalog it was constantly bootlegged in the '90s, and often supplemented by a host of covers Metallica had released on singles and compilations throughout the years. It showed me some good songs that I wouldn’t have known existed if they hadn’t covered them and it turned me onto some other bands that before listening to this I wasn’t really fond of. And if you’re one of those people who only likes their older material disc one is not for you. It’s no where near as good as their other albums. If you’re not a die hard Metallica fan you might not want to pick this up. The solos Kirk threw in went well with the songsĪll in all this album is pretty good listen. For example the harmonica in Tuesday’s Gone. A couple songs had some different instruments thrown in as well. The bass and drums are nothing to go on and on about but they did their job, keeping good rhythm throughout and their was the occasional song where the drums and/or bass got a moment to shine. He even threw some of his own material in their to spice up some songs. He managed to pull off all of the solos and make them sound like they did when played be the original composer. Kirk did a stupendous job with the lead guitar. Hetfield did a good hob of adapting his vocals in some areas to better suite the voice of the artist who wrote the song and in situations where he simply couldn’t imitate the artist’s voice he managed to make his own voice fit into the song. Nothing wrong there.Īs I mentioned earlier a lot of the covers were well done. Pretty much the entire second disc is metal. Theirs is also some more classic rock sounding stuff in there, for example Sabbra Cadabra. There’s a lot of softer more tender songs for example, Tuesday’s Gone and Astronomy. They continued to quarrel and Jason eventually left the band.īecause of the fact that the songs on this album are all composed by different artists it’s quite obvious that theirs is a wide array of different sounding songs. Unfortunately Metallica failed to make good use of this time. Also, the album bought the band time to regroup and come out with some better material for their next album. The album might not turn our that well, but if it didn’t they wouldn’t be to blame because it wasn’t their material. So, James threw the idea of “Garage Inc.” on the table. James had remembered that in the early days of the band something they talked about doing was putting out a CD of cover songs to pay homage to some of the great musicians that inspired them. The public was anxiously awaiting their next move after their previous two disastrous albums. Their was a tremendous amount of pressure on Metallica. The negative feedback caused some arguments between members of the band. The fans simply weren’t responding to their newer material. As previously mentioned the band was in a rut. Now I’d like to get into why the band decided to put this album out. Anyways, although they are still in this rut I think this is probably the high point of it. But the more loyal fans (me) are still waiting patiently for them to get themselves out of this rut. The fans hated it, some even deserted Metallica. Although, it still wasn’t much of an improvement. Unlike Load and Reload this album was metal. After this album they released a greatest hits album (S&M), which did fairly well, but also shouldn’t really count because it’s songs they already knew people liked. Metallica have yet to escape from this downward spiral. The majority of Metallica’s fans were extremely disappointed with the transition from their thrash roots to hard rock. Needless to say, these albums didn’t do that well. They had just released “Load” and “Reload”. For example, “Turn The Page” originally written by Bob Seger was utterly butchered.Īt this point in Metallica’s career they were trapped in sort of a downward spiral. Most of the songs are very well done, some of them are even an improvement on the originals. Seems almost lazy, but none the less I do love this album. It’s just a collection of songs by other composers that Metallica covered. After all, it’s not even their own material. This definitely isn’t my favourite Metallica album.