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the most crowded, ceiling-rattling basement rec room in rock…The effect is…one of timelessness.’ Later, however, it changed its mind, describing S&M as Metallica’s ‘very worst disc…just as useless as every other album on which a rock band plays their hits with an orchestra’. Nevertheless, it reached Number One in America, although it did not even gain entry into the Top Thirty in Britain. ‘No Leaf Clover’ was also issued as an obligatory single – the only one from the album – but that was not a hit even in America. As Metal Hammer editor Alexander Milas says now, ‘If you go back to Justice or Ride there’s this fury and passion that just didn’t exist any more. All of a sudden Metallica didn’t seem to be aware of who they were as a band…they appeared every bit as rich and divorced from the common man as they possibly could.’ He adds, ‘Even though some of the music is actually quality, I really like “No Leaf Clover”, for example, this was a down and dirty thrash metal band that had become part of the elite.’

If as recording artists Metallica were now beginning to take on the appearance of jaded old gods, as concert masters they were still considered a top-drawer ticket, as monolithic and unmissable as the pyramids. So what if they would never make another album as good as Master or as popular as Black, who cared if they had lost the plot artistically, they still kicked ass live, right, dude? What they then did next, however, almost wrecked their reputation completely.

In early 2000, it was discovered that a demo of a thunderous new Metallica track – a kind of mini-me ‘Enter Sandman’ called ‘I Disappear’ – earmarked for the soundtrack of the forthcoming Mission: Impossible II movie was receiving radio play in the USA. Outraged, they ordered an investigation; the source of the leaked track was traced back to a new, pioneering ‘peer-to-peer’ internet service named Napster. Conceived from a computer programme written by a nineteen-year-old college freshman named Shawn Fanning, which allowed users to trade music files without paying a tariff – essentially, providing free music – further investigation revealed that the site had attracted an estimated thirty-eight million users in its first eighteen months. They also discovered that the entire Metallica back catalogue was freely available via the site. At this point the whole band, but Lars in particular, decided something had to be done, instructing Q Prime to look into the legal position. The result was a lawsuit filed at the District Court, in California, in April 2000, alleging that Napster violated three areas of US law: copyright infringement, unlawful use of a digital audio interface device, and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisation Act. Suits were also simultaneously filed against Indiana University, Yale University and the University of Southern California, for contributing to copyright infringement by allowing their students the technology to use Napster. Metallica’s lawyer, Howard King, said: ‘We don’t know how realistic it will be, but we will see what we will find out when we go through the Napster files to see if we can find the people who have downloaded them and if we can then we will go after them.’ He added: ‘Our goal is to put Napster out of business in total and bury them.’ In an official statement, Lars justified the action, saying it was ‘sickening to know that our art is being traded like a commodity rather than the art that it is. From a business standpoint, this is about piracy – a.k.a. taking something that doesn’t belong to you; and that is morally and legally wrong. The trading of such information – whether it’s music, videos, photos, or whatever – is, in effect, trafficking in stolen goods.’

Less well publicised was the fact that Napster was already being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). A rock band threatening to sue its own fans, though – that was news. Hiring an online consulting firm, NetPD, to monitor the Napster service for a weekend, a list of 317,377 internet users who it was claimed had illegally traded