But there are no filler songs on the Black Album. Some bands will come out with an album where there's one or two good songs, and everything else is filler. But you know, there are just so many epic songs on there. "The Unforgiven" is just hands down one of my favorite songs. LISTENING TO THE ALBUM NOW, ARE THERE ANY SONGS FROM IT THAT ARE PARTICULARLY MEANINGFUL TO YOU? It carried us through some pretty heavy times. We did several deployments in Somalia during the time I was in the army, and the Black Album really stood out as an "anthem" for us. MTV had all these amazing videos at the time, and of course they were playing "Enter Sandman" all the time. We had cable in the barracks - actually, one guy had cable, and then we spliced off of that to everybody else's rooms. I know I saw it for the first time when I was in the army before we got deployed. I'd been a fan of all their other albums leading up to that, but I remember when I first saw the "Enter Sandman" video on MTV, I thought it was such an amazing video and song. There's just something about music where you can really pound the dash to on your car while you're going down the road. I love music of all of all genres, but I just have a very distinct passion for metal. I believe I first heard it when I was in the army in 1992. And I love that this album - one of the greatest Metallica albums, and certainly one of my favorites - shaped this whiskey.ĭO YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU FIRST HEARD THE BLACK ALBUM? But I'm always working with the subtleties and nuances of the whiskey, and you really can try this batch against another batch and notice the differences. I feel like we're just beginning to scratch the surface on what sonic enhancement can do. But then once you add the BLACK NOISE™ aspect, it creates a movement inside the barrels which actually enhances the whiskey's flavor, and those enhancements are uniquely shaped by the music.Īs a whiskey maker, it's so intriguing to me that sound can have such an effect on it. When I'm creating a whiskey, I will always taste the batch prior to it - what I call "the control" - and I'll make sure that the blend of the new batch is fairly similar. We still have that same base quality, and the consistency is still there, but there's an added element. It certainly produced a uniquely different result. But Batch 114 - created by Blackened Master Distiller and Blender Rob Dietrich, who stepped into the role following Pickerell's untimely death in November 2018 - was finished using the Black Album in its entirety.ĭID SUBJECTING THE BATCH TO MUSIC WITH A SUSTAINED MOOD AND SOUND ENHANCE THE WHISKEY DIFFERENTLY THAN BLASTING IT WITH A MORE VARIED PLAYLIST? In the past, each batch of Blackened has been "finished" using specially curated playlists of Metallica music. Pickerell employed his innovative BLACK NOISE™ process to hammer their special blend of whiskeys with low-frequency sound, transforming the molecular structure of the whiskey while enhancing and intensifying certain flavor notes and nuances. Unveiled in 2018, Blackened began as a collaboration between Metallica and revered distiller Dave Pickerell of Sweet Amber Distilling. This month, to celebrate one of the bestselling albums in the last 30 years, Blackened American Whiskey is pairing the heavy-metal classic with a special new batch. Popularly known as the "Black Album" for its black-on-black color scheme, the record was phenomenally successful, ultimately selling over 17 million copies in the US alone on the strength of such iconic songs as "The Unforgiven," "Nothing Else Matters" and of course the mighty "Enter Sandman." To learn more about Blackened Whiskey and the sonic-enhancement process, visit years ago this August, Metallica released their self-titled fifth album. The Black Album collector’s pack is available for order online and at select retailers in the US now. A standard finishing practice for Blackened, the black brandy casks are pummeled by low-frequency sound waves forcing the whiskey to penetrate deeper into the barrel, extracting more caramel, honey, and vanilla flavors from the wood. Using the proprietary BLACK NOISE® finishing process, Batch 114 was blasted with all 12 songs from The Black Album. The pack also includes a collectible whiskey coin and the Snakebyte Cocktail Booklet, a recipe book featuring riffs off the classic whiskey Snake Bite drink from some of today’s rock star bartenders from across the country, and named after James Hetfield’s Signature ESP Snakebyte Guitar. It seems our friends at Blackened American Whiskey have been spinning The Black Album a lot lately - it's the focus of their latest special release! Available now, you can enjoy a bottle of Blackened’s Batch 114, sonically-enhanced by the album itself, as part of a limited-edition collector’s pack.
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