(Credits: Kreepin Deth)
Thu 25 September 2025 15:30, UK
War is a recurring theme in the music of Metallica.
Of course, there’s ‘One’, their most famous example and possibly the most defining anti-war song in the history of heavy metal after Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’. However, the history Metallica have with that particular topic goes a lot deeper than one adaptation of Johnny Got His Gun, both before and after the song that broke them into the mainstream.
Now, it isn’t exactly out of the ordinary for a heavy metal band to have multiple songs about war. War is something that 11 to 14-year-old boys are very interested in, after all, and heavy metal is a genre that (with the best will in the world) is defined by the kind of things that 11 to 14-year-old boys are interested in. In heavy metal, war is often nothing more than an excuse to depict cool guys doing cool, heroic things: see ‘Aces High’ by Iron Maiden for more proof of this. Also, nearly every other song by Iron Maiden.
However, despite Metallica being prime pre-teen boy fodder on the surface, they’ve always been surprisingly thoughtful about depicting war in their music. Even an earlier song than ‘One’, their classic ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’, is a more or less faithful adaptation of the Hemingway masterpiece of the same name. One that talks about how exposure to that much death and destruction destroys the soul, even if you make it out alive.
They didn’t stop there. On the same record was ‘Blackened’, on Load was ‘Hero of the Day’, and perhaps understandably, as the band have matured, they’ve been able to put even more thoughtful depiction of the ravages of war on their records. Their comeback album, Death Magnetic, saw songs like ‘That Was Just Your Life’ and ‘The Day That Never Comes’ deal with the subject, yet arguably the best anti-war Metallica song since ‘One’ dropped on their 2016 record Hardwired… to Self-Destruct.
‘Confusion’ opens disk two of the double album and sees singer James Hetfield growl, “War is never done / Rub the patch and battle on / Make it go away / Please, make it go away”. However, this is no vague anti-war platitude. ‘Confusion’ is specifically about post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that haunts veterans of combat. This is something that Hetfield himself spoke candidly about to the official Metallica fanzine, So What.
In the interview, he says, “Shellshock in the military and being put into horrific scenes is one pretty obvious sign of PTSD, and coming home from that, trying to come home and still living that, and having a fear of seeing something that’s affected you so greatly as a trauma inside you that it’s carried home.”
He goes on to say, “PTSD is everywhere, man. Things that happen to you in your childhood, or you know, sports figures, anyone who wears a uniform, who’s gone out there and portrayed a life of service, giving, or using force, power. ‘Go out there and kill. Go out there and get ’em.’”
A sign that you can never judge a band by their reputation, and that even a band as seemingly simple as Metallica can have depths if you look a little closer.
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