The fuck? Not to sound like the quintessential bogan or band wagon jump on-erer but Metallica are awesome.
No they aren't. They did have a short spurt of good times, I even enjoyed some of it! But in my opinion (and yes...the passage of time hasn't helped here) the vast majority of their music sucks. I'd happily listen to rode the lightening, master of puppets, + and justice for all again and I would enjoy most of the music on those albums. I would even enjoy a few songs from the black self titled snake hologram album and the film clip from that first song post hair cuts. That is all.
Full credit to them as pioneers of that 80s speed/thrash/prog sound and for overcoming Burton's death.
As a side note I had a poster of these guys that came out of the old Hot Metal magazine back in the day. It was from the black album - their heads and crossed arms with everything else hidden by black. One night I had a girl hanging out in my room and she pointed out that one of them (I think it was Newsted) had his arms crossed the opposite to all the others. Once it had been pointed out to me that poster was ruined. No wonder the rest of the band didn't like him.