While all Metallica talk had been focused on their new song last week, today we get to hear a new cover from the group. Well more specifically, we get to hear Metallica’s “Ronnie Rise,” a medley of four Rainbow classics the band recorded for Dio tribute album, Ronnie James Dio… This is Your Life.
The 9-minute medley includes parts of “A Light in the Black,” “Tarot Woman,” “Stargazer” and “Kill the King,” and can be streamed in the player below. “[Dio’s] music is so much a part of what’s in Metallica’s DNA, the harder, edgier, blues-based hard rock from the Seventies,” Lars Ulrich told Rolling Stone about the cover. “It was fairly effortless to put this together, because it’s something that we were all reared on. I don’t recall sitting there in a band meeting or anything deciding what to play. Somebody starts playing ‘Stargazer’ – which is sort of just like something that’s in our arsenal to jam – and then that whole period there, ‘Tarot Woman,’ ‘Kill the King,’ ’A Light in the Black’ – that’s just really effortless to jump into.”
So how is it? Well, it’s really tough to beat Metallica’s Mercyful Fate medley, but this one is still pretty awesome. Those particular four Rainbow songs are awesome in their own right, and Metallica does justice to them. Check the song out for yourself in the stream below. Ronnie James Dio… This is Your Life comes out April 1.
