Metallica is an American heavy metal band. The band was formed in 1981 in Los Angeles by
vocalist/guitarist
James
Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, and has been based in San Francisco for most of its career. The band's fast
tempos,
instrumentals and aggressive musicianship made them one of the founding "big four" bands of thrash metal,
alongside
Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer. Metallica's current lineup comprises founding members and primary songwriters
Hetfield and
Ulrich, longtime lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, and bassist Robert Trujillo.
Metallica earned a growing fan base in the underground music community and won critical acclaim with its first
five
albums. The band's third album, Master of Puppets (1986), was described as one of the heaviest and most
influential
thrash metal albums. Its eponymous fifth album, Metallica (1991), the band's first to root predominantly in
heavy metal,
appealed to a more mainstream audience, achieving substantial commercial success and selling over 16 million
copies in
the United States to date, making it the best-selling album of the SoundScan era. After experimenting with
different
genres and directions in subsequent releases, the band returned to its thrash metal roots with the release of
its ninth
album, Death Magnetic (2008), which drew similar praise to that of the band's earlier albums.
