Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash has praised Metallica, describing them as "the pinnacle" of hard rock and metal and crediting them with revolutionising the genre. His comments, made in an interview with Spin, single out the band's ability to reach mainstream success without losing the heaviness that made them dangerous in the first place.

Slash pointed particularly to Metallica's 1991 self-titled release, commonly known as The Black Album, which stripped back some of the speed and complexity of the band's earlier thrash work in favour of bigger riffs and clearer hooks under producer Bob Rock. The album arrived as Guns N' Roses were preparing their own Use Your Illusion records, and Slash noted an appreciation for Metallica producing a consistently strong album compared to his own band's more sprawling output. The two bands later toured together in the 1990s, a run marked by singer James Hetfield being badly burned on stage and a riot linked to Guns N' Roses' behaviour, though Slash now looks back on Metallica fondly as friends who "changed the world" with their music.