(Credits: Far Out / Keneth Cruz)
Mon 23 February 2026 20:30, UK
Emerging as pioneers of the thrash metal scene before exploding into major rock music legends, Metallica has had the pleasure of collaborating with some of the best names in the business. James Hetfield, in particular, has been lucky enough to work with many of his own personal heroes.
Many of which continue to inspire him to this day. Countless rock icons view legends like Tony Iommi and Lemmy Kilmister as major influences, but fewer can say they’ve actually crossed paths with them, let alone jumped at the chance to leave a fraction of the same impact as they did. Maybe it’s luck, or more accurately, the fact that Hetfield is a legend in his own right, the type whose dedication ensured his path from avid music creator to one of rock’s most definitive forces.
When Metallica released Kill ‘Em All in 1983, two years after Hetfield and Lars Ulrich formed the band from a newspaper ad, they had already experienced a hefty amount of the trials and tribulations that usually come with initial band politics – Dave Mustaine had just been fired due to his drug and alcohol problems, and issues like a lack of financial support made everything feel like an uphill battle.
This also meant that they weren’t given the initial springboard they needed to make an immediate impact, with only 15,000 pressings available upon release, but by the end of the year, they’d exceeded this figure by a couple of thousand, an impressive feat considering the work they had to put in and the fact that it was a niche genre that no one else had mastered before.
As with most masterpieces, the record sparked a generation of metal pioneers, and in the years that followed, many bands attempted to follow in the same footsteps or take their own risks in the hopes that they, too, would make history. A couple of years later, Pantera started gaining more prominence, shaping their sound around a handful of major thrash metal records, including Slayer’s Reign in Blood, Anthrax’s Among the Living, and, of course, Metallica’s magnum opus, Master of Puppets.
The two bands became pretty close fairly early on, with Pantera performing as Metallica’s support band on their Wherever We May Roam tour in the early 1990s and then more recently alongside a host of other metal stalwarts on their M72 World Tour. Hetfield and guitarist Dimebag Darrell grew especially close in those early years, developing a mutual respect that ultimately informed both of their material and approaches to music.
The pair first met while Metallica were touring in 1985, a time when Pantera were still very much finding their footing as an underground metal band in Texas. Recalling the ways that Dimebag influenced him on a previous episode of SiriusXM’s Metal Ambassador podcast, Hetfield recalled how he was the first guitarist to introduce him to solid-state amps.
“Well, what a blessing to have been in his life and him in my life,” Hetfield said, explaining that he enjoys recalling “some of those early days” when they would all be “travelling down to the Dallas area and meeting with those guys and just hanging out.” He added, “Dimebag introduced me to the solid-state amp. I remember he had this freaking amazing crunch going on. It was like, ‘What is that?’ You know? So yeah, [we] inspired each other. He inspired me as well. No doubt.”
An important discovery for Hetfield, Dimebag’s solid-state amps allowed him to tighten his sharp, raw sound within Metallica, pushing him to the kind of sound that feels meticulous and well-defined but fluid and hard-hitting all the same.