Rock gods, heavy metal trailblazers, one of thrash’s “big four”, Metallica already have a pretty decent selection of titles to their name, but come Saturday night at Worthy Farm they will have another to add: the answer to the question “Who the hell are “Metal-licker”?”.
The announcement on May 8 that the San Francisco-based quartet would be Glastonbury’s third Pyramid Stage headliners for the 2014 festival shocked many, angered even more and delighted those shrewd enough to have put money on it. There’s no denying that Glastonbury’s free-spirited indie vibe is, to put it mildly, different from the Downloads or Sonispheres of this world and there are bound to plenty of punters who wouldn’t know James Hetfield from Adam.
With that in mind, by way of introduction, here is the best*, most definitive**, absolutely indisputable*** countdown of Metallica’s Top 10 songs from their entire thirty year career.
* Possibly
** Eh, probably not
*** No chance
10. ‘St. Anger’
Captured in the candid, near-the-knuckle Some Kind of Monster documentary, the making of the band’s eighth album nearly tore them apart with petty in-fighting, various addictions and the struggle with their loss of identity. This song, its title track, defines Metallica in the last decade: angry at themselves, the world, their fans and Napster and making an ungodly racket of getting over it.
9. ‘Sad But True’
One of the most accurate tests of a true classic has got to be if it can survive being sampled by Kid Rock and still not lose any of its menace, rage or sheer primal power. The titanic stomp of this cut from 1991’s multi-platinum Metallica, or The Black Album, is made by that immortal Hetfield riff and a John Bonham-esque performance from drummer Lars Ulrich.
8. ‘Until It Sleeps’
Most of the time a grunt or an “oof!” from Hetfield is enough for a Metallica lyric but not in this case. ‘Until It Sleeps’ has the singer excoriating his mother’s cancer and his frustration with his parents’ Christian Scientist rejection of medicine with strong religious imagery. A standout on the otherwise duff Load, combined with the Dante’s Inferno-inspired video it becomes a deeply unsettling experience.
7. ‘Seek & Destroy’
The oldest song in this countdown, taken from Metallica’s debut Kill ‘Em All, this has been a mainstay of their live shows since their early days, the crowd taking over the vocal chores once they started filling stadia. The band have made no bones of the song’s obvious debt to New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands like Iron Maiden and Diamond Head, the opening dual lead guitars being a dead giveaway.
6. ‘Creeping Death’
Also known as the one that no matter how hard you tried, you could never master on Guitar Hero. With guitar parts nowhere near as serpentine as they would later become (…And Justice for All), nor as unforgivingly fast and pummelling as on their debut, this 1984 number hits the thrash sweet spot with a multi-part epic telling the story of the tenth biblical plague of Egypt, staying just on the right side of pretentious. Just.
5. ‘Fuel’
That explosive opening burst: “Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire!” was the kick up the arse most people needed to get through the turgid disappointment that was Reload, almost single-handedly saving the entire album from appearing an overindulgent mess. What follows is a big, dumb, brash rocker from, arguably, the epitome of the big, dumb, brash rock band. Hard to imagine why they didn’t just do that for the whole thing…
4. ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’
No Metallica list would be complete without a mention of the group’s legendary former bassist Cliff Burton who died tragically in a tour bus accident in 1986 aged just 24. Music history has an objectionable habit of irrationally building up the legends of anyone who passes before their time but in Burton’s case the praise is entirely justified. His contributions are some of the most exciting of the band’s early catalogue including his unmistakeable intro to this brilliant single from Ride the Lightning.
3. ‘Enter Sandman’
The closest thing Metallica have to a signature song. Paring back their proggy tendencies and focussing their songwriting made Metallica a hit record and nowhere is that better exemplified than on ‘Enter Sandman’ where Kirk Hammett’s insistent and memorable riff is simply repeated over and over. Only Hetfield’s hammy Crypt-Keeper routine reciting a bedtime prayer in the middle-eight keeps it off the top spot. This one song has unfortunately done more to negatively stereotype metal singers than Alice Cooper, Rob Halford etc. have in decades-long careers.
2. ‘Master of Puppets’
Thrash’s magnum opus; if one record could encapsulate an entire genre it would be ‘Master of Puppets’. It simply knocks all other contenders out of the water. Opening with shuddering stabs of power chords and fading out to cackles of evil laughter and featuring some classic Hetfield and Hammett guitar heroics along the way, by the end of the song’s over eight minute duration, every true metalhead should know who their masters are.
1. ‘One’
This is so much easier when the band does your job for you! Wait until you see what comes top of our U2 countdown! On a serious note, this is serious. ‘One’ tells a harrowingly bleak story inspired by the 1939 novel Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo in which a soldier is wounded, left limbless, blind, deaf and dumb, unable to communicate his desire to be put out of his misery: “Just like a wartime novelty, tied to machines that make me be. Cut this life off from me”. As his despair grows the music builds to a brutally exhausting climax with a lightning-fingered solo by Hammett. This is Metallica as a force of nature, devastatingly powerful and never better.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS – ‘…And Justice for All’, ‘Orion’, ‘Frantic’, ‘Fade to Black’, ‘Am I Evil?’, ‘The Day That Never Comes’
What do you think? Did I get it right? Have your say in the comments!
Elliott Homer
@ERHomer
Latest posts by Elliott Homer (see all)
- ALBUM: Desperate Journalist ‘Desperate Journalist’ - January 19, 2015
- ALL TALK: What’s the Worst Cover Version ever? - December 18, 2014
- FOR THE RECORD: Lupen Crook – ACCIDENTS OCCUR WHILST SLEEPING (2006) - December 7, 2014
