On Friday, as part of Metallica Insider, contributor Chip McCabe ranked Metallica’s album artwork. Because Hardwired… To Self Destruct was so new and he didn’t have the perspective to include it among the others, it was intentionally left off the list. However, we’ve spent enough time with it to think that it’s pretty ugly and disjointed. The cover, shot by Herring & Herring, was inspired by Lars Ulrich’s wedding, which was also shot by them. On a radio special hosted by Corey Taylor, Ulrich explained:
“I met those guys four or five years ago. When Jess and I got hitched up in the mountains, we asked them to come up. For a wedding present they gave us this crazy picture of the two of us superimposed on top of each other. It was this awesome thing. I showed it to James at the wedding and said, ‘One day, when we do something in the future we should get these guys to do all of us on top of each other.’
They came out and shot all of us doing that crazy superimposed stuff. The images were so cool that they became the whole package – this whole campaign, for lack of a better word. We didn’t know it was going to be that cool. But those images are really different from anything we’d done before. It feels really cool.”
But that doesn’t know that the band knows who’s who, as Robert Trujillo continues:
“When we were in Central America there were these big massive posters of that image. James goes, ‘Look, it’s your face.’ I go, ‘No, that’s not my face.’ ‘Well, that’s your eyebrow – wait a minute, that’s Kirk’s nose. That’s your tooth.’”
Hardwired… To Self Destruct is in stores now.
[via Metal Hammer]
