Which award did Metallica’s 1991 album win at the 34th Grammy Awards?

Metallica’s 1991 album won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance at the 34th Grammy Awards.

The ceremony took place in 1992, after the album had become a major international success. The award recognized the album’s performance as a metal recording and marked another important milestone in Metallica’s rise from influential underground band to mainstream rock institution.

The Grammy category is easy to confuse with awards for albums or songs in broader rock fields. Best Metal Performance focused on the recorded performance rather than naming the album as the winner of Album of the Year. Metallica’s victory belonged to the album’s title recording in that category.

The band’s relationship with the Grammys had already attracted attention. Metallica had won the first Grammy awarded for Best Metal Performance in 1990 for “One,” but the Black Album victory confirmed that the band remained central to the expanding recognition of heavy metal.