Digital sales help float sinking record biz

While Metallica, Radiohead and Kid Rock strive to save the album as a format, and music execs wring their hands at lost unit sales, few people consider the fact that the "album" is a 20th century concept.

Tagged: metallica

• Digital sales help float sinking record biz

Metallica Joins iTunes

They may have been dragged kicking and screaming, but Metallica has finally joined the digital revolution.
After famously decrying online downloading as the death of the album format, and filing a few lawsuits in the process, the hard rockers have finally acquiesced to Apple and made available their back catalog on the iTunes Music Store Tuesday.

• Metallica Joins iTunes

Rounding The Sharpness

The genius of Stereolab's best work is very well represented in this recording, mainly in the way that they were able to approach their brainy, somewhat austere subject matter with the same sort of passion that Prince would reserve for sexuality, or Metallica would embrace in articulating rage.

Tagged: metallica

• Rounding The Sharpness

TOM REEKS OF DESPERATION

Another lucky resident won an MTV contest in 1996 that brought Metallica to town.

Tagged: metallica

• TOM REEKS OF DESPERATION

Metallica escapes from the studio for live shows

Rockers Metallica have tapped Rick Rubin (Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash) to produce their forthcoming album.Metallica, whose members have been busy working on the follow-up to 2003's "St. Anger," will take a break from the recording studio to perform at some summer festivals.

• Metallica escapes from the studio for live shows

Metallica

About Metallica

Metallica is an American heavy metal band formed in October 1981. With 57 million albums sold in the United States (RIAA Total Sales), and 40 million albums sold outside the US, the total number of album sales is approximately 100 million. With the release of their most successful album to date, 1991's Metallica, the band has become the most commercially successful heavy metal act in history, as well as the 18th biggest selling act in American music history.

After building a following through its role in the development of modern heavy metal, especially thrash metal, (being considered, along with Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax, to be one of the "big four" of thrash metal), in the mid-1980s, the band broadened its audience in the early 1990s. Accordingly, the band stood as the most commercially visible example of the metal genre for most of that decade. In contrast, Metallica's vastly increased commercial success was accompanied by stylistic changes that fostered accusations of "selling out."

In 2003 Metallica released its 8th studio album, entitled St. Anger, a collection of the most aggressive music they had written in a decade, to deeply divided critical reviews, though their 2004 "Madly In Anger With The World" tour in support of the album remained very successful.

Metallica has confirmed that they are working on what will be their 9th studio album. The release date is expected to be around either late 2006 or early 2007. The album will be produced by the legendary Rick Rubin.

Metallica is listed at #5 on VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock".