Legendary metal band Metallica have announced that two of their landmark albums have now attained new RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) certifications.
Metallica’s self-titled fifth album (aka The Black Album) has been certified 20x platinum for sales in excess of 20 million copies, while the band’s third full length, Master of Puppets, has been certified 8x platinum having crossed the eight million mark.
The Black Album‘s 1991 release not only gave Metallica its first No. 1 album in no fewer than 10 countries, including a 4-week run at No. 1 in the U.S., its series of singles — “Enter Sandman,” “The Unforgiven,” “Nothing Else Matters,” “Wherever I May Roam,” and “Sad But True” — propelled the band to household name status and made them stadium headliners. The album remains the best-selling album of the Luminate era, outselling every release in every genre over the past three decades.
Meanwhile, Metallica’s 1986 breakthrough third LP Master of Puppets has attained 8x platinum status, having sold more than eight million albums. The heaviest album ever to be selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” Master of Puppets has long been regarded as a watershed moment in the history of rock music. Its title track recently joined “Enter Sandman” and “Nothing Else Matters” in the billion streams club, and is now the second longest song to achieve said status (behind Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”).
Metallica is currently in the midst of the third year of its “M72 World Tour,” which has seen the band play to more than three million fans across the globe.