One of the epic albums of the 1990s was Metallica’s self-titled release from August 1991. You know the record: the black one. The “black” album. The band’s name is embossed in the top-left corner and you can also make out the image of a snake.
But from even a short distance, all you saw was a black square. Most people regarded this as a pretty cool move. The story is that the band wanted to keep things as simple as possible.
However, they weren’t the first to do this. If we go back to the Spinal Tap mockumentary of 1984—seven years earlier—the group released the soundtrack with all-black packaging.
Did Metallica rip off Spinal Tap’s artwork idea? There was a mock feud over this that you can see in a 1992 documentary entitled A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica. The good news is that they’re all friends now.
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