Garbage Days Revisited #12: Metallica - “Garage Inc” (1998)

 

“Rock ‘n’ roll ain’t worth the name if it don’t make you f**k...” - Motörhead - Overkill (as covered by Metallica & Lemmy on this ‘ere album)

Now this is a bit of a weird one and possibly the most subjective GDR yet (ironic given that it’s a Metallica EP featured on this compilation that provided the name inspiration for this column). I have to be honest, although I've kind of dipped a toe in the waters many times down the years, I've never really considered myself to be a full on metalhead. I mean don't get me wrong, of course there's a few albums by Maiden, Sabbath, Led Zeppelin et al on my Ipod and I still love AC/DC and Motörhead but I've always instinctively preferred a bit of melody to a full on grunting assault. And in terms of the thrash/glam wars I was always firmly on the glam side - I mean, sure, I can see why grunge killed it off but at least it had good tunes, was aware that it was all a bit daft and was simply about a few drinks and a good time.

Thrash, on the other hand, was never a movement I really got into apart from a couple of Slayer albums and, of course, Metallica. And, like a lot of kids my age, I didn't even hear Metallica's imperial phase stuff (Ride The Lightning and Master of Puppets) until I was in my twenties and moved to university, my introduction to the band was The Black Album - I had Enter Sandman and The Unforgiven on cassette single as a teenager but by the time Load and Reload came out a few years later, I was more concerned with Britpop and Britrock to really bother much with anything from across the Atlantic.

By 1998 though, a lot of that had changed - Britpop was pretty much dead in the water and although a few of the Britrock old guard were still making the Top 40 (Terrorvision, 3 Colours Red etc), the movement had taken a bit of a hammer blow with several of its key bands splitting up. Having now moved to university and fallen in with a new group of friends which included quite a few metalheads, my music tastes were slowly but surely starting to change - during the next year or two I'd discover the Backyard Babies, Buckcherry, the Hellacopters and several others and with very little coming through in the pages of the NME or the Melody Maker that really piqued my interest, I drifted over and started to become a Kerrang! reader instead.

I kind of started reading Kerrang! regularly just as its imperial phase was coming to a close - by the mid noughties it had essentially became a fans' magazine for pretty boy emo no-hopers like My Chemical Romance and Bring Me The Horizon ("million dollar looks and ten cent tunes" as a mate of mine used to refer to them) which is when I comprehensively drifted away from it. But that was still a few years away and around the time I changed my regular Wednesday magazine shop, Metallica put out their covers album Garage Inc and the attendant butchering of Thin Lizzy's Whiskey In The Jar. The album got a good write-up in Kerrang! and, as I said, I'd recently started listening to the band's classic output which was enough to persuade me to pick it up in a New Year at HMV sale a few weeks later for the princely sum of £6.

There's two reasons I think that I still remember Garage Inc fondly. Firstly, even if the quality on there is a bit variable, at least Metallica sound like they're having a blast throughout and that always helps with cover albums. Soon after this and the Spinal Tap-style orchestral album S&M, bassist Jason Newsted would be shown the door to be replaced by Robert Trujillo, the group would make the truly watch-through-your-fingers cringeworthy documentary Some Kind Of Monster and release the truly dreadful St Anger album which saw them trying to return to their '80s thrash sound but comprehensively fail to bring any decent tunes or riffs with them. That was the point where I wandered off - my friends' reactions to Death Magnetic were mixed with some loving it and some hating it and I wasn't really inspired to check it out. I rather stupidly did give their collaboration with Lou Reed a listen out of sheer curiosity and...well, believe the hype, it really is as shite as everyone said it was - total unlistenable up-its-own-arse drivel. So in a funny kind of way, Garage Inc became (in my mind at least) the last decent Metallica album before they well and truly lost their sense of humour and stumbled off into the fog without a compass never to return.

The other reason that I still stick up for this album is that it turned me on to a lot of great bands and pretty much I think nailed in why I've considered myself a rock fan rather than an indie kid since then (although I've never made any bones about having a foot in both camps). In the months following me first hearing it, I would often find myself trailing around the second hand section of Mike Lloyd records in Stoke-on-Trent and the CD stall that would turn up at the weekly student market looking for albums by Thin Lizzy, Blue Oyster Cult, Motorhead, Black Sabbath, Killing Joke, Nick Cave, Bob Seger, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Diamond Head and the Misfits. Essentially, it basically opened my ears to a lot of frickin' awesome music which still makes up a lot of the keystones of what I listen to today. So yeah, basically my love of old skool rock pretty much started here and, in spite of how lacklustre they've mostly been since, I'll always owe Metallica one for that.

As I've said earlier in the article, my dalliance as a Metallica fan was quite brief but Garage Inc definitely did leave a lasting impression on me and, aside from the obvious choices (Lightning, Puppets, oh c'mon, you know the list by now) I'd say it's one of the more underrated albums in Metallica's back catalogue. I did actually end up seeing them live at Download 2004 (the infamous gig where Lars couldn't make it and they had Joey Jordison from Slipknot filling in on drums - regardless of last minute personnel changes it was still a great gig and one to cross off the bucket list). It was a great weekend as well, myself and the guy who would be the singer in the band I was in a few years later basically spent three days acting as impromptu bodyguards for a group of goth girl models and drinking copious amounts of Jack Daniels but that's a whole other story for another time...

Anyway, I guess maybe this is an album that's more personal to me than anything. But from my point of view, Garage Inc was Metallica's last big hurrah before mediocrity kicked in - fast, furious and fun. I can definitely think of worse ways to spend a couple of hours than listening to it.