3 Fun Facts About Metallica for Non-Metalheads

Metallica has announced its 2027 North American tour dates. So while you scramble for tickets, here are three fun facts about the band for non-metalheads planning to attend these stadium shows.

Literary Thrashers

By the time Metallica released their second studio LP, Ride The Lightning, the band was already ascending to the top of the thrash metal scene. And in a few years, they’d almost single-handedly lift the underground genre into the mainstream. But they had more than speedy riffs and double-kick drumming. Metallica proved to be a like-minded bunch. “For Whom The Bell Tolls” is named after Ernest Hemingway’s 1940 war novel. The bleak reality of war and its lingering effects foreshadow Metallica’s breakthrough single and first music video, “One”. But also, the track’s slower tempo set a blueprint for the colossal deep grooves on the Black Album.

Make his fight, on the hill, in the early day,
Constant chill deep inside.
Shouting gun, on they run, through the endless gray,
On they fight, for they’re right, yes, but who’s to say?
For a hill, men would kill; why, they do not know,
Stiffened wounds test their pride.
Men of five, still alive, through the raging glow,
Gone insane from the pain that they surely know.

A Great Cover Band

Because of their success and how they transformed a musical genre, Metallica is often called the heavy metal Beatles. And like the Fab Four, this Bay Area quartet is also a great cover band. They have recorded a multitude of punk, metal, and classic rock covers by the Misfits, Diamond Head, and Thin Lizzy, among others. However, the band’s reading of Bob Seger’s weary road tale is quite the banger, considering how the Silver Bullet Band had already perfected it in 1972.

Lars the Interviewer

Lars Ulrich became a drumming legend by propelling his band through battering epics like “Master Of Puppets” and “One”, as well as the superbly sluggish grooves of “Enter Sandman” and “Sad But True”. But you may not know that Ulrich hosted an Apple Music podcast called It’s Electric. You can watch the archives online to hear an insight most music journalists don’t have. Ulrich speaks to the likes of Noel Gallagher, Dave Grohl, Jack White, and others through the lens of a fellow traveler who’s been there and done that.

Photo by Mike Lewis Photography/Redferns