Blackened

What is the Blackened guitar tone?

The Blackened guitar tone is a fast, scooped, stop-start thrash riff, heard on Metallica's 1980s thrash metal recording. It is a distorted riff tone, and Metallica reportedly tracked it with the ESP MX220, the first guitar James Hetfield used after signing with ESP in 1987, which Ground Guitar calls his main guitar of the ...And Justice for All era in the studio and on tour and Louder says he tracked the album with, an Explorer-style mahogany guitar with EMG 81 and 60 active pickups; Ground Guitar says that after the Master of Puppets sessions Hetfield borrowed one of Kirk Hammett's Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+ heads, which became his primary recording amp for albums including this one and the Black Album, according to Metallica Gear History, and Hetfield told Guitar World in 1991 that he had used the same Mesa/Boogie Mark II on the last three albums, though no source read here places an amp on this song alone; producer Flemming Rasmussen, who took over from Mike Clink six weeks into the sessions, in March, made adjusting the guitar sound his first task, and he told Tape Op that on this album he used an old 1073-style Neve desk with a B&B audio EQ inserted in the amp's effects loop, so he could tweak the amp's sound from the control room; each song started with a click track and Hetfield's guide guitar, mapping its structure and tempo changes, before the drums and his final rhythm parts went on, and Hetfield later said his scooped guitar sound took so much of the low end that it was one reason the bass is nearly inaudible in the mix by Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero; the main riff is Jason Newsted's, written on bass and worked out with Hetfield in Newsted's apartment, the first thing the two built together and the first song written for the album, and Hetfield told him it was good enough to open it; it does, after multi-tracked guitars played backwards, and it averages 190 beats per minute with 19 tempo changes; recorded at One on One in Los Angeles between 30 January and 23 May 1988, it was first played live in Budapest in September 1988 and has been played more than 550 times. Tones in this style live or die on tight low end and a scooped midrange, with the picking hand doing as much of the work as the amp.

You do not need that exact gear to land in the same place. What carries this sound is the gain structure, the EQ curve, the pickup choice and the order of the effects, and all four can be rebuilt on equipment that costs a fraction of the original. The numbers change from amp to amp, because a high-gain head and a small practice amp reach the same voicing from different knob positions. That translation is what Tonelify works out for the rig you actually own.

What gear did Metallica use on Blackened?

The ESP MX220, the first guitar James Hetfield used after signing with ESP in 1987, which Ground Guitar calls his main guitar of the ...And Justice for All era in the studio and on tour and Louder says he tracked the album with, an Explorer-style mahogany guitar with EMG 81 and 60 active pickups; Ground Guitar says that after the Master of Puppets sessions Hetfield borrowed one of Kirk Hammett's Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+ heads, which became his primary recording amp for albums including this one and the Black Album, according to Metallica Gear History, and Hetfield told Guitar World in 1991 that he had used the same Mesa/Boogie Mark II on the last three albums, though no source read here places an amp on this song alone; producer Flemming Rasmussen, who took over from Mike Clink six weeks into the sessions, in March, made adjusting the guitar sound his first task, and he told Tape Op that on this album he used an old 1073-style Neve desk with a B&B audio EQ inserted in the amp's effects loop, so he could tweak the amp's sound from the control room; each song started with a click track and Hetfield's guide guitar, mapping its structure and tempo changes, before the drums and his final rhythm parts went on, and Hetfield later said his scooped guitar sound took so much of the low end that it was one reason the bass is nearly inaudible in the mix by Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero; the main riff is Jason Newsted's, written on bass and worked out with Hetfield in Newsted's apartment, the first thing the two built together and the first song written for the album, and Hetfield told him it was good enough to open it; it does, after multi-tracked guitars played backwards, and it averages 190 beats per minute with 19 tempo changes; recorded at One on One in Los Angeles between 30 January and 23 May 1988, it was first played live in Budapest in September 1988 and has been played more than 550 times.

Sources: Louder: the story behind Blackened, Ground Guitar: James Hetfield's 1987 ESP MX220, Ground Guitar: James Hetfield's Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+, Louder: how to sound like James Hetfield, Guitar World: Metallica's 1991 interview on the Black Album, Tape Op: Flemming Rasmussen, riding the Sweet Silence, Wikipedia: Blackened (song), Wikipedia: ...And Justice for All

Tonelify's tone matcher reads that chain and translates it to the amp and guitar you already own, returning gain, bass, mids, treble and presence values along with a pickup position.