429. Metallica / Garage Inc. 1998. 4/5

Following the release of both Load and Reload in the mid-1990’s, Metallica did a great deal of touring of the world. Whether or not this inhibited their ability to come up with new material, or whether they just felt as though they needed a break from writing new material, or they had come to the realisation that their newer material was a little average, it set the stage for a couple of different releases from the band toward the end of the decade. Garage Inc. was one of them.

Comprised entirely of cover songs, the album came as two discs. Disc One contained songs specially recorded for the publication, while Disc Two contained previously released songs, the majority of which were b-sides of the singles that the band had released over the years.

Disc Two is a classic. It contained the ‘original’ Garage Days Revisited, which was “Am I Evil” and “Blitzkrieg”, which came from the “Creeping Death” single. Also, the entire Garage Days Re-revisited EP is here, while the rest of the great covers came from singles, including the live renditions of the Motorhead songs they played for Lemmy’s birthday bash. Every song here is a classic, and excellently redone.

Disc One, on the other hand, is a bit of a mishmash. Had it been released as a single disc, the sales for this album would have been cut to about 20% of what they came to. A lot of the songs are from a different genre than that which most would consider Metallica to be in. The obvious songs in this category would be Nick Cave’s “Loverman”, Lynard Skynard's “Tuesday’s Gone”, Blue Oyster Cult's “Astronomy”. Even though they released it as a single, Bob Seger’s “Turn The Page” is one that I really dislike and have trouble stomaching whenever I hear it. Metallica (at this point of their career) probably had enough credits in the bank to try something like this and get away with it, but these songs for me really let down this album.

The good, of course, is very good. “Sabbra Cadabra” and “Mercyful Fate” are just brilliant. “It’s Electric” and “Die, Die My Darling” are good updates on the originals, while “Whisky In The Jar” is a vast improvement on the original Thin Lizzy version.

Very few bands in the world could get away with putting out a double disc album full of cover versions of their favourite songs. I guess it shows the power Metallica had at that time. One wonders if they could ever reproduce that again now.

Rating: In the end, rating the entire album is a difficult thing to do, so I can only do it by taking an average of the two discs.
Disc 1: 3/5. Disc 2: 5/5. Total rating: 4/5.