Metallica, inertia, and numbers: a 1983-1995 timeline
Love them or hate them, Metallica are the most commercially successful heavy metal band in the United States (there's arguments that Iron Maiden might be a smidge bigger globally and I'll wait for some actual statistics experts to figure that one out). They have sold the most records out of any metal band. You can trash talk them 7 ways til Sunday (as I am want to do) but you can't argue numbers. That's tapered off in recent years but I think that has more to do with people just not buying records anymore/fan fatigue/let's face it, they ran out of creativity a long time ago. There was a particular review on Metal-archives.com that, to this day might still be their most famous review. It's the review of Master Of Puppets from writer Ultraboris where he grades the album a goose egg, and furthermore calling it "the album that killed heavy metal." We aren't going to be discussing that review, but there is a quote from that review that w