Metallica have released their Limited 30th Anniversary Remastered Box Set of the 1991 self-titled classic, The Black Album, today, and many a juicy tidbit has dropped surrounding this historic event.
Let’s get down to it!
First, you have Metallica and Miley Cyrus performing “Nothing Else Matters” yesterday (9th) on the Howard Stern Show. Check it out below. Cyrus sang lead with Metallica vocalist James Hetfield backing her up. The daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley is a huge star in her own right, often exploring different musical genres and collaborating with other musical visionaries. She is no stranger to the song as she had performed her version at the 2019 edition of U.K.’s Glastonbury festival.
Next up, we can now hear a version of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” as performed by Sweden’s Ghost. Linköping’s own heavy rock thespians, produce a very melodic take on the song while keeping all of the heavy intact. We have that for you at the bottom.
Ghost leader Tobias Forge said that Metallica is:
“one of the most important bands for me — has been for a long time. Definitely a band without whom I probably wouldn’t do these things. I wanted to be a rock musician before I knew, or before I was enamored with Metallica, but they definitely inspired me. When I was a kid and liked The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix and all that, they were clearly from another time doing something that sort of belonged to the past, whereas Metallica, when I started listening to them, they were very much current and they were very now. They were the biggest band in the world at that time, and still are. But they inspired me in many, many ways. And nowadays, of course, I get the amazing opportunity to be inspired and be taught, firsthand, by a band that I’ve spent so many years learning from from a distance.”
And lastly but certainly not leastly, We have a new, Corey Taylor, version of Metallica’s “Holier Than Thou” for your listening pleasure. Take a scroll down below for that gem.
Taylor talked about “Holier Than Thou” and the big four; Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer, and how they impacted him as a young artist,
“That was the sounding gun for a whole new generation of psychos, because those bands appealed to so many different — I don’t wanna say ‘cliques,’ but so many different crowds. The punk kids loved them, the metal kids worshipped them. It was still too underground for the straights — quote-unquote the straights. But even the alternative kids dug it, because there was so much ferocity in it and there was just something different. It felt heavier than Sabbath and heavier than Deep Purple, but those were the bands that fueled these bands. Between that, and then you could feel that undercurrent of the hardcore scene — the punk scene, the hardcore scene, the stuff that we, the skater kids, were listening to, as well as the hip-hop or whatnot. So this was this burgeoning explosion of attitude, fast music, just in your face, and we just knew as soon as our parents heard it, they hated it, which made us love it even more. Nothing is better than listening to something that scares the hell out of adults.”
Taylor went on to call Metallica’s Master Of Puppets “…the perfect heavy metal album. There’s no fat,” he said:
“I mean, you can put it on and listen to the… The only bad thing I can say is that it’s too short. Before you know it, it’s over, and you’re, like, ‘Wait a minute,’ and you’ve gotta start it over again. So, it’s crazy. It’s just a beautiful, beautiful album.”
Both Ghost and Corey Taylor covers are available on The Blacklist, a collection of covers from The Black Album as performed by artists spanning the globe, and transcending genres and language. 50+ artists populate the Blacklist with their takes on their favorite tracks from 1991’s Metallica: The Black Album.
The Ramstered Limited Edition Box Set has too much to list and is a must have for any veteran or aspiring Metallica fan!
Look below for all the good, good.
https://youtu.be/61NrdIozCcQ
