Mick Wall (2010) – Book Review

Author: Mick Wall
Published: 2010
Genre: Biography / Heavy Metal / Thrash Metal / Music History
Riff Report Rating: 🎸🎸🎸🎸½ — 4.5/5

Some bands become successful.

Some bands become enormous.

And then there’s Metallica — four blokes walking onto a stage while “The Ecstasy of Gold” plays and 70,000 people collectively lose their bloody minds before they’ve even played a note.

How do you get from grubby early-’80s clubs, tape trading and underground thrash metal to becoming one of the biggest bands on planet Earth?

That’s the monster story at the centre of Mick Wall’s Metallica: Enter Night.

Published in 2010, Wall’s biography tackles the whole sprawling Metallica saga: Lars Ulrich meeting James Hetfield, Dave Mustaine’s turbulent tenure, Cliff Burton’s brilliance and tragic death, Jason Newsted’s difficult years, the commercial earthquake of The Black Album, Napster, Some Kind of Monster, St. Anger, Robert Trujillo and the band’s remarkable return with Death Magnetic.

It’s success.

It’s tragedy.

It’s egos.

It’s riffs.

It’s arguments.

It’s millions upon millions of records.

And underneath everything is one stubborn little idea:

Metallica wanted to be bigger.

Bloody hell, mun.

Mission accomplished. 🤘⚡

⚡ BEFORE METALLICA

Our story begins with Lars Ulrich.

Born in Denmark, Lars came from a sporting family and initially looked capable of pursuing tennis seriously.

Then heavy metal got involved.

Thank God.

Because somewhere in an alternate universe, Lars Ulrich is arguing with an umpire instead of a snare drum.

Actually…

He’d probably still be arguing.

😂🥁

After moving to California, Ulrich became obsessed with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.

Diamond Head.

Saxon.

Motörhead.

Iron Maiden.

Tygers of Pan Tang.

Bands from this side of the Atlantic were helping inspire a teenager who would eventually help reshape American heavy metal.

Then came a newspaper advert.

And eventually…

James Hetfield.

🎸 JAMES + LARS = TROUBLE

The early relationship between James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich is one of rock history’s great creative partnerships.

They’re very different personalities.

But somehow the chemistry works.

Lars brought ambition, organisation and an almost supernatural ability to push Metallica forward.

James brought the riffs.

So many bloody riffs.

Together they created the engine that still powers Metallica.

But the earliest incarnation needed more.

Enter bassist Ron McGovney.

And then one of the most combustible personalities in metal history…

🔥 DAVE MUSTAINE

Oh boy.

Dave Mustaine.

Metallica’s early lead guitarist was fast, aggressive and ridiculously talented.

He was also volatile.

Mustaine’s drinking and behaviour contributed to increasingly serious problems within the band.

Eventually, Metallica decided he had to go.

And not gently.

Mustaine was fired in 1983 and sent home.

No elaborate farewell.

No conscious uncoupling.

No LinkedIn post thanking him for his contribution.

Gone.

Naturally, Dave took this incredibly calmly and never mentioned Metallica again.

😂

Of course, Mustaine went on to form Megadeth, creating one of thrash metal’s greatest bands and ensuring the Metallica/Mustaine story would continue generating arguments for decades.

But there’s another important point.

Mustaine contributed ideas to Metallica’s early material, and understanding that contribution is essential when examining the band’s beginnings.

The history is messy.

Thrash wouldn’t have it any other way.

🦇 ENTER CLIFF BURTON

Then Metallica found Cliff Burton.

And everything changed.

Burton wasn’t simply another bass player.

He brought musical sophistication.

Harmony.

Classical influences.

Theory.

A wildly distinctive approach to the bass.

The bloke looked like he’d wandered out of a bell-bottomed 1970s hard-rock band, plugged into Metallica and immediately started teaching everyone things.

James and Lars wanted him badly enough that Metallica relocated from Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area.

Good decision.

Very good decision.

💿 KILL ’EM ALL

In 1983 came:

Kill ’Em All

Metallica’s debut remains gloriously feral.

“Hit the Lights.”

“The Four Horsemen.”

“Whiplash.”

“Seek & Destroy.”

“Metal Militia.”

This isn’t polished stadium metal.

This is a young band absolutely desperate to play faster, heavier and harder.

Thrash metal was taking shape.

Metallica weren’t alone — Slayer, Anthrax, Exodus and eventually Megadeth would all become crucial — but something about Metallica immediately felt different.

They had ambition.

Lots of it.

⚡ RIDE THE LIGHTNING

Then came Ride the Lightning in 1984.

And suddenly the songwriting expanded enormously.

“Fight Fire with Fire.”

“Ride the Lightning.”

“For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

“Fade to Black.”

“Creeping Death.”

Bloody hell.

That’s not simply faster thrash.

That’s a band discovering dynamics.

Acoustic guitars.

Melody.

Longer arrangements.

More ambitious structures.

And Cliff Burton’s musical influence is increasingly apparent.

Metallica were growing frighteningly quickly.

Then they created the album many fans still consider their masterpiece.

🪦 MASTER OF PUPPETS

  1. 1986.

Master of Puppets.

One of the defining albums in heavy-metal history.

“Battery.”

“Master of Puppets.”

“The Thing That Should Not Be.”

“Welcome Home (Sanitarium).”

“Disposable Heroes.”

“Orion.”

“Damage, Inc.”

Absolutely filthy.

🎸🔥

The title track alone demonstrates why Metallica became special.

It’s long.

Complicated.

Heavy.

Melodic.

Aggressive.

Yet somehow completely memorable.

Metallica had reached another level.

And then tragedy hit.

💔 CLIFF BURTON

On 27 September 1986, while Metallica were touring Sweden, their tour bus crashed.

Cliff Burton was killed.

He was only 24 years old.

It’s impossible to discuss Metallica without recognising how profoundly Burton’s death changed the band.

These weren’t middle-aged musicians dealing with the loss of a colleague after decades together.

They were young men.

Their band was rising.

Their friend suddenly wasn’t there.

And somehow they had to decide what came next.

Metallica chose to continue.

🎸 JASON NEWSTED ENTERS THE FIRE

Following auditions, Jason Newsted, formerly of Flotsam and Jetsam, joined Metallica.

Imagine that pressure.

You’re replacing Cliff Burton.

In Metallica.

While the band is grieving.

Enjoy your first day, mate.

Newsted’s years in Metallica remain one of the biography’s most fascinating threads because he joined an established brotherhood that had suffered an unimaginable loss.

And he wasn’t always treated particularly kindly.

The hazing became notorious.

The emotional distance mattered.

Yet Jason gave Metallica years of committed performances and became a hugely important part of the band’s live identity.

⚖️ …AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

Then came …And Justice for All in 1988.

A sprawling, technical, furious album.

“Blackened.”

“…And Justice for All.”

“Harvester of Sorrow.”

“One.”

“Dyers Eve.”

The songwriting became increasingly complex.

The production also gave us one of metal’s longest-running questions:

WHERE THE BLOODY HELL IS JASON’S BASS?

😂

The famously subdued bass mix has been debated endlessly.

But regardless of production arguments, Justice pushed Metallica into another commercial league.

Especially after “One” and its music video brought the band onto MTV.

Metallica were no longer merely underground thrash heroes.

Something much bigger was coming.

🐍 THE BLACK ALBUM

  1. 1991.

Metallica teamed with producer Bob Rock.

The songs got shorter.

The production got enormous.

And the album cover became almost completely black.

Then:

BOOM.

Enter Sandman.

“Sad but True.”

“The Unforgiven.”

“Wherever I May Roam.”

“Nothing Else Matters.”

The self-titled Metallica, universally known as The Black Album, became a global phenomenon.

Metallica went from huge metal band to one of the biggest bands in the world.

And naturally…

Some old-school fans absolutely hated it.

💰 “SELL-OUT!”

Ah yes.

Metal’s favourite accusation.

Metallica had simplified some of their songwriting.

They’d made music videos.

They’d written a ballad.

Millions of new fans arrived.

Therefore:

SELL-OUTS!

Except here’s the awkward bit.

The songs were bloody brilliant.

You don’t have to prefer The Black Album to Master of Puppets.

You don’t even have to like it.

But pretending “Enter Sandman” isn’t an extraordinarily effective hard-rock song because your mate discovered Metallica through Kill ’Em All is just daft.

The band wanted to grow.

They grew.

Massively.

🎤 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS

Perhaps no song demonstrates Metallica’s evolution better than “Nothing Else Matters.”

Imagine telling someone listening to “Whiplash” in 1983 that Metallica would eventually release an enormous orchestral-friendly ballad.

They’d probably throw a beer at you.

Yet it worked.

Hetfield revealed vulnerability.

The band broadened its vocabulary.

And millions of people who would never have touched a thrash album suddenly entered Metallica’s world.

Some stayed long enough to discover “Battery”.

Gateway successful.

🤘

🔥 LOAD AND RELOAD

Then things became really controversial.

Metallica cut their hair.

Everybody panic!

🚨😂

Load arrived in 1996.

Reload followed in 1997.

The music incorporated more hard rock, blues and alternative influences.

The image changed.

The band looked different.

For some thrash purists, this was practically treason.

But Metallica had never been particularly interested in standing still.

Were both albums perfect?

No.

Are there cracking songs across them?

Absolutely.

“Until It Sleeps.”

“King Nothing.”

“Bleeding Me.”

“Fuel.”

“The Memory Remains.”

Metallica were experimenting.

Not everyone wanted to come along.

🎻 S&M

Then Metallica decided:

“What if we play with a symphony orchestra?”

Because obviously.

The collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Michael Kamen, produced S&M in 1999.

And once again, something that could have been an absolute dog’s dinner somehow worked.

Metallica’s more expansive compositions lent themselves surprisingly well to orchestration.

It was another example of the band refusing to remain safely inside the thrash-metal box.

💻 NAPSTER

And then…

Napster.

Ohhhh, here we go.

😂

In 2000, Metallica became one of the most prominent artists to challenge the file-sharing service after discovering their music was being distributed without authorisation.

From Metallica’s perspective, this was about artists controlling their work.

To many fans, however, it looked like extremely wealthy rock stars complaining about people downloading MP3s.

The PR was brutal.

Lars Ulrich became the face of the battle.

And suddenly Metallica weren’t merely discussing copyright.

They were being accused of fighting their own fans.

With hindsight, the argument looks considerably more complicated.

Digital distribution did transform the economics of recorded music.

Questions surrounding ownership and artist compensation remain very much alive.

But at the time?

Metallica took an absolute kicking in parts of the public conversation.

🚪 JASON NEWSTED LEAVES

By 2001, Jason Newsted had had enough.

He left Metallica.

His departure exposed tensions that had been building for years.

Creative control.

Side projects.

Relationships.

Communication.

The band was becoming dysfunctional.

And then James Hetfield entered rehab.

Metallica had survived death, personnel changes and global fame.

Now they were struggling to survive each other.

🎥 SOME KIND OF MONSTER

If you’ve never watched Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, prepare yourself.

It’s one of the most uncomfortable rock documentaries ever made.

Not because anyone gets arrested.

Not because there’s some giant backstage riot.

Because you get to watch one of the world’s biggest metal bands…

go to therapy.

Band therapist Phil Towle enters the picture.

James and Lars argue.

Kirk Hammett attempts to navigate the chaos.

Bob Rock temporarily plays bass.

Everyone talks about feelings.

Some metal fans presumably watched through their fingers.

😂

But here’s the thing:

It was fascinating.

Metallica allowed cameras to capture them at their most dysfunctional.

For a band built on masculine aggression, that vulnerability was extraordinary.

🗑️ THE SNARE DRUM HAS ENTERED THE CHAT

And then came:

ST. ANGER

  1. 2003.

No guitar solos.

Raw production.

Long songs.

A famously controversial snare sound.

CLANG.

CLANG.

CLANG.

Somewhere, a metal fan just flinched reading that.

😂🥁

St. Anger remains one of Metallica’s most divisive records.

But context matters.

This was a band trying to make music while rebuilding itself.

Is it messy?

Yes.

Is it frustrating?

Absolutely.

Is it interesting?

Definitely.

You can hear the dysfunction.

Whether you actually want to hear it for 75 minutes is another question.

🦀 ROBERT TRUJILLO ARRIVES

Eventually Metallica needed a permanent bassist.

Enter Robert Trujillo.

Formerly associated with Suicidal Tendencies and Ozzy Osbourne, Trujillo brought monstrous playing ability and a physical stage presence all his own.

And Metallica offered him $1 million as an advance for joining.

Imagine trying to act casual during that conversation.

“Yeah, sounds alright. I’ll check my diary.”

😂

Robert became Metallica’s longest-serving bassist and brought a new stability to the line-up.

After the turmoil surrounding Newsted’s departure and St. Anger, Metallica finally looked like a functioning band again.

⚡ DEATH MAGNETIC

Then came Death Magnetic in 2008.

Producer Rick Rubin encouraged Metallica towards longer arrangements and more obvious connections with their thrash roots.

“All Nightmare Long.”

“Cyanide.”

“The Day That Never Comes.”

“My Apocalypse.”

Suddenly the guitar solos were back.

Long songs were back.

Thrashier riffs were back.

Metallica hadn’t travelled backwards.

But they’d reconnected with parts of their musical identity that many fans desperately wanted to hear again.

And for Mick Wall’s 2010 biography, this provides something close to a natural ending point.

Metallica had survived.

Again.

✍️ MICK WALL KNOWS ROCK ’N’ ROLL

Mick Wall is hardly an outsider to the world of enormous rock bands.

His career as a music journalist has put him around some of the biggest names in hard rock and metal.

That experience matters.

He understands the machinery.

Managers.

Labels.

Journalists.

Egos.

Touring.

Success.

The difference between what a band’s PR machine says happened and what might actually have been happening behind closed doors.

His style is accessible, opinionated and occasionally provocative.

You don’t always have to agree with his interpretation.

In fact, you probably won’t.

That’s part of the fun.

⚠️ THIS IS A BIOGRAPHY, NOT METALLICA’S VERSION

That’s worth remembering.

Enter Night isn’t Metallica’s official autobiography.

It’s Mick Wall’s interpretation of Metallica’s story.

And whenever you’re reading an unauthorised or independently written biography, perspective matters.

Motives are interpreted.

Relationships are reconstructed.

Sources may disagree.

Nobody except the people directly involved knows precisely what was said in every private conversation.

So read critically.

Especially when Wall moves from documented events towards interpretations of what band members thought or felt.

That doesn’t make the book worthless.

Far from it.

It simply means:

Don’t use one biography as your entire Metallica history lesson.

⏳ THE BIGGEST PROBLEM: IT ENDS IN 2010

Reading Enter Night today comes with an obvious limitation.

Metallica didn’t stop in 2010.

Not even close.

The band subsequently released Hardwired… to Self-Destruct in 2016 and 72 Seasons in 2023.

There were enormous tours.

The innovative M72 stadium production.

More generations discovered the band.

And then “Master of Puppets” experienced another enormous cultural moment after appearing in Stranger Things.

A song released in 1986 suddenly had teenagers discovering Metallica decades later.

Absolute scenes.

So Enter Night is best viewed as a history of Metallica up to the Death Magnetic era.

Not the complete story.

🧠 WHAT THE BOOK REALLY CAPTURES

For us, the fascinating thing about Metallica isn’t simply that they became successful.

It’s that they’ve repeatedly survived things that could have destroyed the band.

Dave Mustaine’s firing.

Cliff Burton’s death.

Jason Newsted’s departure.

Commercial backlash.

Napster.

Addiction.

Internal warfare.

St. Anger.

That bloody snare.

😂

Most bands don’t survive one major crisis.

Metallica have practically turned surviving crises into a business model.

And underneath everything, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich remain together.

They argue.

They clash.

They irritate each other.

But the creative relationship endures.

That’s remarkable.

🎸 AND THEN THERE’S KIRK HAMMETT

Poor Kirk.

😂

While James and Lars are engaged in some enormous psychological battle over the future of Metallica, Kirk often appears like the bloke sitting between two arguing mates in the pub.

But his contribution shouldn’t be underestimated.

He replaced Dave Mustaine under enormous pressure.

He played on every Metallica studio album from Kill ’Em All onwards.

And he delivered some of metal’s most recognisable solos.

“Fade to Black.”

“Master of Puppets.”

“One.”

“Enter Sandman.”

“The Unforgiven.”

Kirk’s melodic instincts became fundamental to Metallica’s sound.

Also:

Wah pedal.

Lots of wah pedal.

We love you really, Kirk. 🎸😂

🖤 CLIFF’S SHADOW NEVER REALLY LEAVES

Perhaps the most poignant thread running through Metallica’s entire history is Cliff Burton.

He was in the band for only a few years.

Yet his influence remains enormous.

You can hear it in the early records.

You can see it in how the surviving members discuss him.

And you can sense that the trauma of his death shaped relationships within Metallica for years afterwards.

Sometimes a band survives tragedy without ever completely processing it.

Enter Night gives readers plenty to think about on that front.

Metallica continued.

But continuing isn’t the same thing as forgetting.

🤘 DOES ENTER NIGHT HOLD UP?

Absolutely — with a couple of caveats.

It’s detailed.

Fast-moving.

Packed with Metallica history.

And Wall isn’t afraid to examine the band’s contradictions.

This isn’t 400 pages of:

“Metallica are brilliant, everything they did was brilliant, goodnight.”

Thank God.

Metallica are interesting precisely because they made questionable decisions.

They took risks.

They pissed people off.

They changed.

They failed.

They recovered.

And occasionally they recorded a snare drum that sounded like someone hitting a biscuit tin with a spanner.

That’s a story.

🎸 THE RIFF REPORT VERDICT

Metallica: Enter Night is a hugely entertaining examination of one of heavy metal’s most extraordinary careers.

Mick Wall captures the ambition that took Metallica from tape-trading thrash outsiders to global stadium monsters.

But he also captures the cost.

Friendships.

Addiction.

Grief.

Egos.

Personnel changes.

Public backlash.

Internal collapse.

Metallica’s journey wasn’t some smooth climb towards stadium domination.

It was more like driving a tank up a mountain while everyone inside argues about who gets to steer.

And somehow…

the bloody thing reached the top.

⭐ RIFF REPORT RATING: 🎸🎸🎸🎸½ — 4.5/5

The half-guitar deduction comes largely because this is one author’s perspective and, inevitably for a book published in 2010, the story now stops far too early.

But as a Metallica biography covering the band’s formation through the Death Magnetic era?

Absolute riff-filled belter.

Read it alongside other Metallica histories.

Question the interpretations.

Argue with Mick Wall.

Argue with your mates.

Then stick Master of Puppets on and remember the one fact nobody can seriously dispute:

Metallica changed heavy metal forever.

Not bad for a Danish tennis fan and a shy kid who liked riffs.

Now…

EXIT LIGHT!

ENTER NIGHT!

TAKE MY HAND!

Actually, don’t.

We’ve got St. Anger on and we’re trying to find out who’s left a saucepan in the snare drum.

CLANG. 🥁😂⚡

💬 OVER TO YOU, RIFFERS!

Have you read Metallica: Enter Night?

What’s the greatest Metallica era?

⚡ Burton years?
⚖️ Justice era?
🐍 Black Album domination?
🔥 The modern Metallica machine?

And because we fancy starting a small civil war in the comments:

What’s Metallica’s greatest album?

Get stuck in, butt. 👇🤘

Proudly Welsh. Proudly Loud. 🐉🤘

The Riff Report Blog
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