Into the Black

The Inside Story of Metallica, 1991-2014

By: Paul Brannigan, Ian Winwood

Narrated by: Ray Porter

The final chapter of Paul Brannigan and Ian Winwood's in-depth coverage of Metallica details the latter half of the band's extraordinary, decades-long career.

The second volume of Metallica's definitive biography opens as the band breaks through to mainstream with its fifth album, Metallica (a.k.a. The Black Album), topping the Billboard charts and its hit single "Enter Sandman" dominating the airwaves. By 1993, after a two-year tour, Metallica had become the biggest hard-rock band in the world. Success naturally brought new challenges, and the band ran the risk of alienating its original fans. It was beset by controversy over stylistic shifts, concessions to the mainstream, its stance on file sharing (in Metallica v. Napster), even the band members' haircut decisions. By the end of the century, they were a band teetering on the brink of self-destruction. A stunning return to form awaited, however.

Brilliantly chronicled by top UK music writers Paul Brannigan and Ian Winwood, this is a masterful conclusion to an epic rock tome.

©2014 Paul Brannigan and Ian Winwood (P)2014 Blackstone Audio

Another great insight!

I've read alot about the band over the years, but this, and it's predecessor, are great!

Great piece of metal history

Would you consider the audio edition of Into the Black to be better than the print version?

Ray Porter delivers an outstanding performance. He conveys emotion so well during this book. The material may be familiar to Metallica fans but but it is presented in a way that digs deeper and the authors do not pull punches. When something was bad, they say that it was bad. Highly recommended!

Amazing

I read both Metallica biographies by Brannigan and Winwood, both are great. However, this was even better for me. I was born in 1981, therefore I started to follow the band when this second book begins. If the first book was great to know and learn more about the band, this was went beyond and took to the 90s and early 2000s as a fan. Both Books are a must reading for metal fans. Hopefully Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett and Trujillo will build much more and we will have a third book! Long live METALLICA!

Interesting Book, Ray Porter is great

I am a long time Metallica fan and I felt like this book was definitely written by fans. So listen with that in mind. Still, it was an interesting read with a cacophony of cool insights into the band while also shining a light on a relatively unseen sector of the music industry and the rise of a dominant metal force that truly put this brand of music out there for all to see and appreciate.

Worth a read whether you like Metallica or not.
My only gripe is that the album LuLu should've been mentioned in maybe 2 sentences - it is a disgrace to ALL music and truly unlistenable and nothing can be said go salvage its existsnce. Unless you were to remove Lou reeds contribution (vocals) and pawned it off as an album of instrumental songs only it is in my opinion (and most everyone's) by and large the groups biggest misstep that even they swept under the rug as soon as was possible.

Better than I thought it would be.

The narrator was good and it did have some information I did not know. It was an interesting story.