(Credits: Far Out / Metallica)
Sat 13 September 2025 4:00, UK
The story of Metallica has always been strange by most metalheads’ standards.
Despite them being perceived as sell-outs by some fans who refuse to hear anything that they did past the 1990s, there aren’t too many bands that could claim to be the spokesmen for a genre quite like the thrash titans have over the years. They have helped promote the idea of metal music to millions of people, but sometimes the biggest triumphs of their career don’t necessarily have to come from them.
Before the band even had a single song under their belt, they were already willing to play whatever heavy riffs struck their fancy. During their first performances, it was all about paying tribute to the biggest names in British heavy metal, be that Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, or even the more obscure bands that Lars Ulrich was listening to like Diamond Head and Angel Witch. The only problem came when they had unintentional plagiarism thrown into the mix.
For instance, ‘Am I Evil’ was quickly turning into one of the concert favourites during the early days of the group, but they left that one detail out of the equation when they forgot to tell people it was by Diamond Head. So when they finally became one of the biggest bands in the world when ‘Enter Sandman’ started blowing up, the band felt it was right to give back to their influences when working on Garage Inc.
Alongside the covers they had been playing for years, though, the studio record is a look at what made the band tick outside of the traditional rock and roll songs. There are pretty obvious artists that were no-brainers for them to cover like Black Sabbath and Mercyful Fate, but if people came into the record knowing only the basic taste of Metallica, they would probably be surprised to see songs by Bob Seger and Lynyrd Skynyrd sprinkled in amongst the other tunes.
But outside of the typical rock and roll tunes, James Hetfield knew a thing or two about darkness, and Nick Cave’s ‘Loverman’ felt like it was made for his voice. Cave already has the most deliciously vile pipes in the world of gothic music, but Hetfield isn’t half bad at translating his words to metal music. And according to Kirk Hammett, the band couldn’t have picked a better time to lay everything down.
After all, the best way to get a decent recording is to have the right energy behind every song, and Hammett remembered recording by the light of the moon at three in the morning, saying, “It was the perfect vibe to do that track. [It was] definitely a high point.” And as strange as it sounds, you can hear that in the performance as well.
It was already clear that Hetfield and Ulrich weren’t on the same sleeping schedules when working on The Black Album, but this is a tune that could have never been made in broad daylight. This is the kind of strange, seductive music that works perfectly on a moonlit night with a distinct chill in the air. And if Hetfield spent that time at night working on his vocal, getting to that late hour probably helped his voice get extremely low for the final take.
His bellowing baritone might sound closer to Johnny Cash’s in spots compared to Cave’s, but that was far from a problem. Hetfield already has his own tone of voice, and even if Cave may not have been the biggest fan of Metallica, it’s easy for musicians to make a connection with their musical contemporaries in song rather than talking with them directly.
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