CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/19/2021

‘Metallica: The Black Album in Black & White’ releases worldwide!

“What do I say about the Black Album? It turned Metallica from a large garage band into an arena then stadium act and it changed everything.” So begins photographer Ross Halfin’s Introduction to Metallica: The Black Album in Black & White, releasing worldwide today from Reel Art Press. Produced in collaboration with the band and published to accompany the global reissue of their 1991 self-titled album known informally as the Black Album, this 224-page collector's item features 171 black-and-white photographs by Halfin, the band’s official photographer onstage and off, alongside texts by Halfin and band-members James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, Jason Newsted and Robert Trujillo. “On the Black Album tour, we would always go to places and do pictures,” Halfin writes, “whether it was Lisbon where we just had a minivan and a driver, and we would stop wherever we felt somewhere had a vibe … you have to realize with Metallica, it’s always about the vibe. It’s strange looking at this now—the idea of all of us walking around looking for spots to take photos would be more or less impossible today, but I suppose that goes with the territory of a band who have gone from a garage band to what they are now. The Black Album is very much the representation of when that happened. You could say it’s their Led Zeppelin IV—or in their world, their Number of the Beast—it changed everything.”