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.”
106 & Park was a cultural moment celebrating the best, brightest stars of Hip-Hop and R&B.
Kicking things off in 2000, the show was hosted by personalities A.J. Calloway and Marie “Free” Wright, with the intent to recognize the most popular music and music videos at the time. And while the show added bits like Wild Out Wednesday, Throwback Thursday, and Freestyle Fridays, the true star of the show was the countdown, where fans enjoyed the art of the music video, all curated by them. Fans would vote for the chance to include their favorite artist’s latest releases on the coveted Top 10 Countdown.
Some videos were so beloved, that they wound up having to be placed on the 106 & Park Video Hall of Fame, where the music video would be “retired” after appearing on the countdown list 65 times—a true testament to the power of fandom and the impact that some of these visuals had on the culture. As BET issues yet another tease of a potential 106 & Park reboot for its 25th Anniversary, VIBE thought it would be great to walk you through the music videos that had the honor of being retired and placed into the show’s Hall of Fame. Watch the videos below.