Metallica surprised festivalgoers with a performance of their hit-strewn Black Album at Louisville’s Louder Than Life event Sunday night. The band, which also played the fest Friday night, had promised two unique setlists for the weekend but did not reveal it would be reviving a run-through of its bestselling record, which recently turned 30.
Either because they were feeling iconoclastic or because all the hits are at the beginning of the album, the group played the record in reverse order. That meant kicking things off with the technically demanding “Struggle Within,” which features snaking guitar riffs.
Fan-shot video shows James Hetfield holding his head high as he and Kirk Hammett play the theme from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story number “America,” which kicks into the swaggering, rarely played “Don’t Tread on Me.” Metallica have not played either of those songs since June 24, 2012, the last time they played the Black Album in full (and in reverse) for their own Orion Festival. Another infrequently song they resuscitated was the moody “My Friend of Misery,” which they haven’t played since the 2013 Soundwave festival in Melbourne. The band has played these three songs a fraction of the times it has whipped out the record’s big hits, “Enter Sandman,” “Nothing Else Matters,” and “Sad But True.”
The performance follows two other acknowledgments on the band’s part of the Black Album’s significance. Earlier this month, Metallica put out a massive box set collecting demos, rehearsals, live performances, and more alongside a remastered copy of the original album, and they put out The Blacklist, a supersized covers compilation. The latter features renditions of every track on the record by Miley Cyrus, Chris Stapleton, Alessia Cara, Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan, Weezer, J Balvin, and others.
“A great song can be played any way,” Hootie and the Blowfish frontman Darius Rucker, who sings “Nothing Else Matters” on the set, told Rolling Stone. “You play it reggae, heavy, country — it will still be a great song.”
VIDEOS
Aesop Rock raps like not many others can and he's asking outsiders to "Send Help" for those that can't on his latest single. Well, he's not actually doing that, but he's definitely lyrically stunting on everyone on it. It's the second offering from his next thematic adventure, Black Hole Superette.
It's due out on May 30 and will try to successfully follow up on his 2023 masterclass that is Integrated Tech Solutions. This will then end his longest drought of not dropping a project in nearly a decade. From 2016 until 2019 was the length of that gap. However, he did make a soundtrack all by himself in 2017 for the film Bushwick.
The other track that Aesop Rock treated us to was "Checkers" back in early April. Black Hole Superette "delves into the invisible forces that shape our lives and psyches. It’s about the small, often overlooked moments—the everyday experiences that blur the lines between the real and the unreal, waking and sleeping."
If there's anyone who can make the mundane feel interesting and intricate, it's Aesop Rock. But as we alluded to earlier, "Send Help" feels more like one big rhyme flex. But it's done with needlepoint precision. "Pigeon on my shoulder like a goth Rio / The putdown Picasso here to un-massage the ego / I'm friend or foe depending on the content in your keynote / And not above the lobbing of a rotten tomatillo." Spin it below.
Quotable Lyrics:
Whodunnits and cozy mysteries, who stole the crypt keys
Who showed the minions to the minced meat, it was me
Hut-hut, helmet off, blitz the whole bitstream
Override the A/V in, with A/V out the in-between
IV in, one of Epi, onе of Ralph Steadman
Phoebe Judgе, EPMD, The Amazing Kreskin
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