REVIEW: Metallica: Enter Night - Biography

Coming from someone who has read the Joel McIver books on Metallica, along with a few others, I believe this is definitely the best so far.

Mick Wall is clearly a very skilled and experienced journalist that has been covering the band almost since they first came into existence. He has meticulously researched the shit out of everything, and knows how to write it all up in a very entertaining and informative way. My one problem with Wall is that he injects his own opinions as fact at certain points. I don’t think this is confusing - anyone reading the book will easily separate the facts from his judgements - it’s just I disagree with him a bit. So when he says the songs on Death Magnetic are, “all but forgotten minutes after they have juddered to their predictably explosive climaxes”, for example, I end up mumbling angrily.

He also arranges the book in an interesting way, with the first half (‘Born to Die’) leading up to bass player Cliff Burton’s tragic death in 1986, and the second half (‘The Art of Darkness’) everything that follows. The opening prologue recounts Cliff’s death and closes with the line: “…taking with him the soul of the band with the dumbest heavy metal name ever”. This emphasis on Burton is deeply impressive and totally appropriate.

The book is 447 pages long and the first 318 are all about what happens before The Black Album is even released - giving you an idea of just how much focus is on the band’s best period (the eighties). The way their formation and rise to fame is detailed provides some new, hugely satisfying insights.

Every Metallica fan should own this, without question - but it should be interesting to any music fan in general too. Highly recommended.

By Daniel Rutledge