Metallica's Kirk Hammett has opened up about the making of the band's self-titled 1991 album, also known as The Black Album. In an interview with the UK's Uncut Magazine, Hammett said, "When we were done with '…And Justice For All' and the subsequent two-year tour, there was no place to go on that path. We'd hit the wall. The last song on that album is a song called 'Dyers Eve' and it's six or seven minutes of the most crazy progressive off-the-wall stuff METALLICA is capable of doing. After playing all those songs on the road for a couple of years, we said, 'There's got to be a reset here.'"
He continued, "It wasn't easy to make, as we wanted a certain sound on that album. We wanted everything to be the best it possibly could be, sound-wise, song-wise and performance-wise, and so we went in and — I'll probably be the first person to mention this — we wanted to come up with a 'Back In Black', an LP stacked with singles. That was the concept, songs which sound like singles but aren't. "
Lars Ulrich added, "When we walked out of the studio a year later with the 'Black Album' in our pockets, I don't think any of us thought we'd see each other again. But we ended up spending the next 10-12 years making records together. It was a love affair, but it got off to a rocky start. But thankfully he pushed and challenged us. He didn't accept our refusal to be experimental and to cast the net wider."