Why is metallica so successful

We just are fiercely independent, and it's an approach to everything that we do, which is that we don't try to latch on to another way of doing things or piggybacking on particular trends or fashions or business styles or whatever. And we've made, I guess, some decisions along the way, both creatively and practically, that have put us on a different course. So it's not my place… I'm not a journalist, and it's not my place to sit and talk about why we are in a particular place and other people are not.

I feel uncomfortable with that. Lars also talked about the "most important decisions" that METALLICA has made over the years that have given the band greater commercial success than that attained by all of their peers.

We always felt that we could… When 'Ride The Lightning' came out, our second album, in , there was an acoustic guitar on the song 'Fade To Black' , and people started freaking out: 'Oh my God! What are they doing? So we've always let the creative energy and the creative flow dictate what we were doing, and then, like we say, the practical, the business, all that stuff, kind of is a second parallel course that follows it. With every listen of the album, the nostalgia of my 30 year experience as a fan hit me many times, and left me thinking about the importance of Metallica to our genre, and even the world.

Like any other band, they did their share of relentless touring, writing, and building from humble beginnings to get where they are today. The sub-genre climate of the early 80's was not as open minded as it is now, which meant these hard hitting, fast shredding, noisy thrash underdogs had to work hard to gain the attention they deserved.

Metallica's success didn't happen over night, and they wear it proudly on their sleeve through out their career. They are a band that made it through fan experience, not MTV and radio spins.

Where many bands of their size have shed older songs from the setlist permanently, and form attitudes of vanity, Metallica embraces the fan favorites , pays constant homage to their own heroes , and keeps their ear low to the ground. The return to form found on Hardwired is a perfect example of this. Being the greatest metal band in history doesn't come easy, but they understand what it is to be an ambassador and fan of this genre.

Something many other bands forget, with even the slightest bit of success. Metallica, The Loving Advertisement. Metallica loves their fans unconditionally, and constantly gives back. By the time Metallica released Ride the Lightning a year later, this fiery garage band had mutated into something far more imposing.

Gone were the simplistic, high-speed assaults; replaced by a hugely ambitious reimagining of the heavy metal template that prized melody and intricate arrangements as highly as brute force and bravado. Unlike many of their peers from the early thrash scene, Metallica were plainly developing into great songwriters, too. There were even moments, most notably on grandiose semi-ballad Fade to Black, that even embraced subtlety, of all things.

Some diehard fans balked at the notion that Metallica had grown up a bit, but the majority were simply blown away. Within the space of 12 months, the band had reinvented an entire genre twice.