When a young guitar player named James Hetfield and a young drummer named Lars Ulrich put a band together in California in 1981 and called it Metallica, they had very similar taste in music – except when it came to the kind of soft rock they heard on the radio. Hetfield hated that.

In a 2008 interview with MOJO, Hetfield talked about his formative influences and revealed how he argued with Ulrich – and with Metallica’s original bassist Ron McGovney – about the smooth, radio-friendly sound of mainstream rock acts such as Styx, REO Speedwagon and Foreigner.

Hetfield said of the late ’70s: “In America, there was early glam, like Kiss and Alice Cooper. I was into Aerosmith, Ted Nugent – rawer, crazier stuff.

“My best friend was a Kiss freak. He had every Kiss poster, and back then every magazine was Kiss. Finding Aerosmith stuff was a little tougher. I only had three of my walls done, and my friend was working on the ceiling already!”

When Hetfield attended his first concert in 1978 at the age of 15, it was Aerosmith at the Los Angeles Forum – with AC/DC as the opening act.

He recalled to MOJO: “I was a big Aerosmith fan, but I had no idea that AC/DC was that cool. I went with my older brother. I was so excited.

“AC/DC, that was the first time I heard them, and I dug it. But when you go to see your favourite band you don’t really want to see anybody else. Some Metallica fans are like that.

“So when AC/DC were playing, I was just waiting for Aerosmith. Like, ‘Get off! Hurry up!’

“I remember I bought an Aerosmith bootleg shirt, it fell apart after two washes, the sleeves were two different colours. And I remember smelling this very strange smell at the gig. I didn’t know much about pot but… learned kind of quickly!

“It was a pretty eye-opening experience, going into a big arena to see a big rock concert. Just the whole feel – the lights going out, the anticipation, the crowd, the smells… I mean, every sense was just soaking it in.

“I never got over that, man. I need to feel that, still. I was very impressed. I wanted to be on stage. I wanted to be the guy up there, not hanging around in the crowd.”

Hetfield also talked about the Foreigner fan who ended up being the bassist in Metallica from October 1981 to December 1982.

“We had this other friend, and his favourite band was Foreigner. So we kinda knew that he was a little different. Actually, his name was Ron McGovney!

“I tried to teach him, man. Like, ‘Come on, dude!’ He’s like, ‘They’re heavy!’”

Referring to Foreigner’s 1977 hit Cold As Ice, Hetfield joked: “Maybe on the next [Metallica] covers album we’ll do Cold As Ice! No, we were never Foreigner fans.”

But he said that Lars Ulrich did have an interest in some of the more melodic rock bands of that era.

“I remember when I hooked up with Lars,” Hetfield recalled. “I was so into the stuff that he had, that he brought over from overseas. We’d go to the record store and start soaking up some of the metal imports. The records – the vinyl – it was packaged differently, and it was real thick. Like, wow!

“I’d go over to Lars’ house and he’d have been shopping. He had a pretty well-off family, they had some dough.

“I remember he was unwrapping all these Styx and REO Speedwagon records and I’m going, ‘What are you doing?! What are you buying this crap for?’ He’s like, ‘I wanna check it out!’ And I was like, ‘We’re sick of that!’”

Ultimately, what Hetfield and Ulrich used as the template for Metallica was a blend of classic heavy metal such as Black Sabbath and Budgie and the new, streetwise early ’80s sounds of Motörhead, Iron Maiden and Diamond Head.

As a result, Metallica’s super-heavy sound made them outcasts in the Los Angeles rock scene of 1981 – so much so that they eventually relocated to San Francisco.

“Hair metal,” Hetfield mused. “There wasn’t a whole lot of other stuff in LA. There was punk, but that had kinda of drifted away a little bit.

“So hair metal, that’s what there was. Stuff that was…. hmm, heavy but not. You know, Ratt, Mötley Crüe, they were playing the clubs a lot back then.”

He laughed: “If you wanted to go to gigs and meet chicks and hang out, that’s where you went. But it wasn’t easy, trying to pick up chicks when you’re not really wearing the proper LA gear, you know?”

The first time Blackberry Smoke frontman Charlie Starr saw Metallica live in concert he was 14 years old. It was at the Lakewood Amphitheatre in Atlanta, the year 1989, and Metallica were tearing it up on the Damaged Justice Tour. It was a “very profound” experience. Starr remembers it to this day.

But maybe the second time he caught the Bay Area behemoths live will live even longer in the memory. Speaking to Otis Gibbs for his YouTube channel, Starr says it was not only a date with metal royalty, but a chance to play one of the most iconic electric guitars of all time.

Starr was attending Metallica’s 2019 show in Birmingham on the invitation of his friend, Richard Brent, the curator of the Allman Brothers Big House Museum in Macon, Georgia.

“He’s a guitar nerd like the rest of us also, and so that’s perfect because he – basically – was the caretaker of Duane Allman’s ’57 Goldtop, and the guy who owned the guitar at the time, and the guy who owns it now, will allow Richard to take that guitar and be played by people they approve,” says Starr.

If you are in Macon, look up the Big House. You will no doubt see the 1957 Goldtop on display. This is the guitar Allman bought in ’69, developing the archetypical southern slide guitar sound on it. Allman played it extensively during the tracking of Derek and the Dominos’ Layla.

Few guitars and their owners wrote themselves into music history in such a brief period of time. Allman swapped it out not long after Layla, trading it plus $200 and a 50-watt Marshall tube amp for a cherry burst 1959 Les Paul Standard. Tragically, Allman would die in a motorcycle accident in 1971, aged just 24.

Very few players are on the approved list. Billy Gibbons has played it. Derek Trucks has played it – he actually owns one that is one serial number away from Allman’s. Vince Gill has played it. Starr is lucky enough to have played it many times. “Great guitar,” he says. “Definitely, you feel a ghost in that guitar.”

This was a day in which Hetfield was going to get to play it. With Metallica having fully embraced digital amp modellers for their live show, Starr and Brent thought they’d take something suitably old-school to complement the Goldtop. Grabbing a Fender Princeton tube combo, they set off for Birmingham.

“We go in and James, the tour manager, and James’ tech, Chad [Zaemisch] come in and they’re fantastic, so friendly, and great hosts. We play the guitar and pass it,” says Starr. “James Hetfield and I are passing Duane Allman’s guitar back and forth – it was crazy.”

People might point to the Mesa/Boogie MK11c+ head, or the legendary – and sadly missing Marshall – as the secrets to Hetfield’s tone. Having watched him up close, playing backstage on the Goldtop, Starr says its all technique. “He sounds like James Hetfield playing through a Princeton,” he says. “On that right hand it was just like [tails off].”

Starr and Hetfield had a moment. They were swapping pictures of guitars on their phones. Hetfield had something cool with him to show Starr, too, and gets Zaemisch to bring in a ’58 Gibson Explorer. Starr’s mind is so blown he doesn’t even notice Kirk Hammett has arrived. He wants to have a shot on the Goldtop, too.

But he also might just have one of the few Les Pauls that can rival it for historical significance, Greeny, the 1959 Les Paul Standard that was once owned then named after the late Peter Green, then owned by the late Gary Moore, before Hammett picked it up in 2014 and has been playing it onstage and in the studio ever since.

When Hammett asked if he would like to play it, Starr was taken aback. In the moment he forgot Hammett even owned it. When he picked Greeny up, it did not disappoint.

“I said, ‘You’re kidding?’ He said, ‘Yeah, go get it.’ So his tech goes and brings it in,” says Starr. “Man, it was just this surreal experience. That guitar is so worn, and loved, and broken and repaired. And so the first thing I do is put it in the middle position and play Oh Well. That’s what you do! Then we took pictures.”

At the time, Hammett’s purchase of Greeny – which has led to a whole line of Gibson and Epiphone replica signature guitars – was the subject of much conjecture. Just how much did Hammett pay for it? Some people had suggested crazy money. Hammett put the question to Starr.

“He goes, ‘What do they have me paying for this guitar?’ I was a little like, ‘I’m not supposed to say. You’re not supposed to ask me that,’” says Starr. “‘Shit, man, I don’t know.’ But I think at the time people were like [whispers] four million. ‘I dunno, man. Lots.’”

“Well I can’t tell you what I paid for it,” replies Hammett. “But I can tell you what I didn’t pay for it, and it ain’t what you’re all saying!”

We can say how much Allman’s Goldtop was worth that day. It sold at auction in 2019 for an eye-watering $1.25 million via Gotta Have Rock and Roll.

If you’re not on the list of approved players, that’s okay. You can still check it out if you happen to be in Macon, Georgia. Just head to the Big House Museum. You can hear more from Otis Stiggs and Starr at Stiggs' YouTube channel

Metallica could have packed it all in and walked away after the tragic bus crash that claimed the life of bassist Cliff Burton on 27 September 1986. But they didn’t. They persisted, recruiting Jason Newsted from Flotsam And Jetsam, and putting together the most audacious – perhaps the most brilliant – album of their career.

…And Justice For All was never going to be an easy record. Not for the band. Not for the audience. Even now, it sounds audacious. Never before or since have James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett committed such a hostile electric guitar tone to tape.

With its dense, byzantine arrangements, tricksy time signatures, and a mercilessly bleak atmosphere, …And Justice For All stands as the apogee of Metallica’s musical ambitions – at least as far as thrash metal was concerned.

Their debut album Kill ‘Em All helped inaugurate that art form in the summer of 1983. Ride The Lightning (1984) would widen the canvas, testing the hypothesis that headbanger savagery and a burgeoning appetite for musical progressivism could be held in perfect equilibrium, and two years later, the crystalline front-to-back perfection of Master Of Puppets presented material evidence that this hypothesis would hold true.

…And Justice For All doubled down on all that came before. It had to. And the album’s centre-piece, the anti-war epic One, realigned the stars for Metallica. Alternating between fatalist balladry of the verse and the rhythmically unwieldy riff violence of the chorus, before going full metal jacket on its rat-tat-tat second act, its explosive dynamics shattered the glass ceiling for underground metal bands.

Anything was possible now. In 1990, One even won Metallica their first Grammy for Best Metal Performance, after Jethro Tull famously usurped them the year previous. They broke their own rule, too, and shot a promo video.

But if it was instrumental in finding a wider audience it would do so on Metallica’s terms. One is all kinds of brutal, lyrically and musically. We could see One as the thematic successor to Disposable Heroes, or For Whom The Bell Tolls, or as completing a thrash power ballad trilogy that started with Fade To Black and Welcome Home (Sanitarium).

The song itself was inspired by the catastrophically injured protagonist in Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, a war veteran who loses his limbs, sight, hearing and speech while his mind remains sharp, wishing for death. Hetfield’s lyrics give him a voice and they could scarcely be darker.

As with all the best ideas in metal, the inspiration for the melody came from Venom, whose B to G chord progression on Buried Alive [from the seminal 1982 album Black Metal] had been stuck in Hetfield’s brain, and he would find a use for it during the opening section for One. The thrash violence came after the fact.

“The kick drum machine-gun part near the end wasn’t written with the war lyrics in mind, it just came out that way,” Hetfield told Guitar World in 2009.

But the most significant modulation on One is not from B to G; it’s from those pristine clean tones those scooped EQ thrash tones courtesy of a Mesa/Boogie Mark C++ head.

By this point, Hetfield was a devotee of the Roland JC-120 Jazz-Chorus, the solid-state combo with onboard chorusing and a credible claim to being the best clean guitar amp of all time.

Would Hammett have used one too? Perhaps. But as he remembers it, in the same Guitar World interview as Hetfield's, the A/DA MP-1 preamp rack module was responsible for his cleans.

“I used an ADA preamp and an A/DA MP-1. It was a programmable digital amp that had tubes in it, with a separate rack-mounted Aphex parametric EQ,” said Hammett. “I remember blending that thing with the Boogies for lead sounds and clean sounds. The clean sound on One was done almost exclusively with the A/DA MP-1.”

Hammett’s guitar for the one sessions was his ESP KH-1, the all black first-generation S-style signature guitar from the brand with the skull-and-crossbones fretboard inlays. When speaking to Mark Agnesi for Gibson TV’s The Collection, Hammett described his KH-1 as a “Flying V in a Strat body” with one particular modification mandated by the demands of performing One live.

“All my ESP guitars have had the same specs ever since 1988 or ’89. It’s just paint jobs. That’s the only thing that changes,” he said. “There’s a slight scallop from like the 17th fret. It’s only so I can do the guitar solo for One. [Laughs] The only reason why it’s scalloped! That’s the only reason why. Nothing else. Because I am not a right-hand [tapping] technique guy.”

And yet on one he is, tapping out a pentatonic arpeggio in the upper registers. Hammett told Guitar World that he might have sweated over his lead parts on One but that tapping came easy. With Ulrich working those double kick drums, the staccato strobes and pyro of it all, how else could he play it?

“The main guitar solo at the end, with the right-hand, Eddie Van Halen-type tapping, came almost immediately,” said Hammett. “That guitar solo was just a breeze; what was going on with the rhythm section in that part of the song was just very, very exciting for me to solo over.”

The other solos, not so easy. Hammett credits Hetfield for inspiring his first solo. It came from a melody the Metallica frontman was playing around with. The clean picked arpeggios in the first solo came from a chord exercise but sounds anything but. As for the solo in the middle of One? Hammett was going to suffer for that. But this was never going to be an easy album.

…And Justice For All had a difficult birth. Mike Clink, who had produced Guns N’ Roses’ incendiary debut, Appetite For Destruction, was in the control room, only to be replaced by returning Master Of Puppets producer Flemming Rasmussen. The finished mix would immediately be controversial on account of Newsted’s bass guitar being all but inaudible.

Speaking to MusicRadar in 2016, Hetfield admitted that a relentless touring schedule, epic sets at high-volume, had fried their hearing and this ultimately affected the mix – especially with Hetfield and Ulrich more involved in the control room.

“I know there’s quite a few people that love that record; there’s a real punchiness to it, and because it’s somewhat progressive, that does fit with it a bit,” said Hetfield. “You can hear things a little better.

“Obviously there’s not much depth to it as far as thickness goes and, you know, it is what it is because that’s Lars and I trying to venture into producing ourselves and discovering… Well, you can tell who produced it because the guitars and the drums and the vocals are really loud.”

The walls were closing in. Metallica were running out of time, and mixed …And Justice For All during their run on the 1988 Monsters Of Rock Tour, where they where sharing a bill with Van Halen, Scorpions, Dokken and German hard-rockers Kingdom Come. Hetfield said this was fine while they were on the East Coast. As the tour ventured westwards it proved to be a logistical nightmare.

“On a day off, Lars and I would fly… well, fly or drive. Most of the times, drive,” he said. “I remember at the time limos were a big deal and it actually had leg room for me.

“Sleeping on an eight-hour drive in a limo to wherever from somewhere in Iowa or wherever when we were mixing this thing in upstate New York. So we were pretty fatigued, ear-fatigued as well. That’s a big factor in it, I think. There’s a lot more high-end and it had to cut through our deaf ears at that point.”

Physically, they were on their feet. Hammett had not yet finished all of his solos and time was of the essence. He, too, had to make the commute back to the Hit Factory in New York to track lead guitars under Rasmussen’s guidance.

“When we were recording that album I really didn’t have as much time to do the solos as I’d wanted to,” said Hammett. “I think we had to leave for the Monsters Of Rock Tour on a Saturday and it was Thursday but we were still recording guitar solos. I can remember showing up at 10 or 11 in the morning and working on solos and that leading to two or three o’clock in the morning the next day. It was just ridiculous: 15 or 16 hours of recording. And I had four or five days of that.”

Monsters Of Rock would have been an occasion to try out some of the new material but only Harvester Of Sorrow made it onto the setlist – which is ironic considering just how much trouble it was giving Hammett. That was one solo that he just couldn’t put away, and Rasmussen was not going to push him for it.

“I was so tired, it was so late at night and my fingers and hands were so fatigued that I had trouble bending a note in key to another note,” said Hammett. “I remember Flemming saying, ‘Okay, just bend it this much. Just bend it a half-step and I’ll take it up with the harmoniser for the other half-step.’ And I remember thinking to myself, ‘Is this really necessary, or can we just stop and do it all over again properly tomorrow?’ But there wasn’t a tomorrow. We had to do it that way.”

That middle section solo to One was still haunting Hammett. “I must have recorded and rerecorded it about 15 million times,” he told Guitar World. “I wanted a middle ground between the really melodic solo at the beginning and the fiery solo at the end.”

He didn’t get it. What he did get was more air miles and more late nights. He finally tracked it on the eve of their performance at the RFK Stadium, in Washington DC, on 10 June. He had the solo, a piece that could sit between the melodic grandeur of One’s first act and the artillery fire of the outro. The Washington show sucked but so what. One was complete.

It would make its live debut on 11 September 1988 at the MTK Stadion, Budapest, Hungary, on the opening night of the Damaged Justice tour, when Metallica, similarly damaged but renewed, would open a new chapter for the band.

…And Justice For All was the ne plus ultra of thrash metal progressivism. There was no way to top it. Maybe this was reason enough for Metallica to seek Bob Rock’s counsel and engineer a box-office refresh of their sound on 1991’s Black Album. But the momentum towards mega-stardom and the conquering of the world’s stadia was gained on the battle to finish One. Just as well. If you are going to perform it live, then you need a big venue with all those flash bombs and pyro going off.

• ...And Justice For All is out now via Rhino/Blackened.

James Hetfield has a long-standing signature guitar collaboration with ESP, made his bones playing a white Flying V knock-off, and is one of the world’s most high-profile proponents of the Gibson Explorer. But among the Metallica frontman’s arsenal of electric guitars are a handful of custom builds by a Californian luthier by the name of Ken Lawrence.

Lawrence is not your typical guitar builder. In fact, he was not really a guitar builder. At least, that was not his specialty. Bass guitars were his thing. So how did he end up making some of Hetfield’s most-famous six-strings – including an Explorer-style electric named Carl that was put together using the floorboards of Metallica’s old garage?

In a recent interview with Guitar World, Lawrence reveals all, explaining how Doug West, the now director of R&D at Mesa/Boogie, was his Metallica connection. West thought maybe then-Metallica bassist Jason Newsted would be interested in one of his friend’s designs.

“I would leave instruments at Mesa for Doug to show to whoever might be stopping by,” says Lawrence. “He took one of the basses to a Metallica rehearsal when they were working on their guitar rigs, to see if Jason Newsted might be interested. Doug told me that James liked the workmanship on the instrument and he kept flipping it back and forth, studying it. Then he asked if we could meet.”

The answer was yes. But there was a problem. Lawrence only had basses. Luckily, Hetfield could see the potential.

“That was kind of a strange interview because I didn’t have a single guitar to show him,” says Lawrence. “I went for a guitar commission with a carload of basses! I laid them all out on the floor, and he went, ‘Okay, let’s make a guitar.’”

That guitar would be an Explorer-style electric. Lawrence based the shape off one of Hetfield’s ESP and got to work. The headstock design would be radically different to the six-in-line headstock found on the ESP. This one was based on design by one of Lawrence’s friends and was originally intended for a five-string bass.

It looked like it you could hunt wild boar with it, which is probably why the guitar resonated with Hetfield. Lawrence tells Guitar World that the Metallica frontman liked what he saw.

“I brought those patterns to James and it was an instant fit,” he says. “In retrospect, there are elements of that headstock that actually mirror the Metallica logo – it’s funny how things in the cosmos line up.”

It wasn’t just Lawrence’s headstock designs that came out of left field. He had a taste for exotic tone woods and started sourcing some from Central America. The first Explorer-style electric he made for Hetfield – the Hunter – ended up with a mahogany body and a Chechen top. Lawrence has now made seven guitars for Hetfield and says an eighth could be on the cards.

That eighth would do well to have a better back story than Carl, which was made out of the floorboard’s of Metallica’s old garage. Carl is named after Carlson Boulevard in El Cerrito, California, Metallica’s Bay Area home and HQ from 1983 to 1986. They wrote Master Of Puppets in that garage.

When the garage got torn down, Andy Anderson, vocalist from local crossover champs Attitude Adjustment, saved some of the wood and gave it to Hetfield. Hetfield turned it over to Lawrence and he got to work. In a video posted to Metallica’s YouTube channel, Hetfield said he didn’t need to give Lawrence too much direction.

“I knew he could work with that wood,” said Hetfield. “I wanted it rustic. I wanted it like the garage was. The artists that we work with, if you give them too much direction then it’s not their art, in my opinion. You like an artist because you know what he does. Same with Ken. I know, as far as woods [go], he’ll make this thing playable, smooth, workable, so I wasn’t worried about the finish of this.”

What Hetfield worried about was Lawrence making it too clean. But the finished guitar still has the nails on the top. That top still looks like repurposed flooring. “You feel the wood,” said Hetfield. “You feel the grain. I mean, it’s almost like grooves in vinyl!”

Lawrence told the story of Metallica and their garage through that guitar. The inlays feature Kirk Hammett, Lars Ulrich (with lightning drum sticks), Hetfield, then there is the late Cliff Burton at the 12th fret.

“Ken is very into meaning and drew a story about what he thought would be fitting for this historical piece,” said Hetfield. The inlays are also a code, arranged in 3, 1, 3, 2 groupings to signify Metallica’s old address, 3132 Carlson Boulevard. The details are incredible.

There are four silver half-dollars on the back for each member, and another commemorative Master Of Puppets detail on the inside of the control cover. The design’s practical too – that control cover is magnetic for easy access for Hetfield’s tech to switch out batteries for the active electric guitar pickups. It sounds great, too.

“Most of the clean songs that I do, whether it’s Nothing Else Matters or One, or Sandman, when there’s picking at the beginning or something it is usually done on a Ken Lawrence guitar,” said Hetfield. “Because it’s got such a great sound to it in the clean department especially.”

Metallica rocked the YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California, on Friday night, headlining the Helping Hands Concert and raising money for their All Within My Hands Foundation, and took the opportunity to play fast and loose with their songbook.

Or should that be slow and low with the songbook, because this was an opportunity for Metallica frontman and rhythm guitar kingpin James Hetfield to demonstrate exactly what he meant when he told MusicRadar that the Load and ReLoad era was a time when the thrash pioneers were letting their blues guitar influences show, by reworking Fuel as a slack-tempo’d groover in baritone tuning.

Hetfield’s white Flying V copy, his Gibson Les Paul Custom, and arsenal of ESP signature guitars could sit this one out. Instead, he leaned upon a bona fide MusicRadar favourite, and a notorious purveyor of low-end twang, Danelectro’s ’58 Longhorn Baritone.

Presenting Fuel in a lower register is not something we had on our Metallica bingo card but then over the years the Bay Area behemoths have been full of surprises. The original, tracked a half-step down in Eb, is all high-energy – the music to match the lyrics. In baritone tuning, it sounds more Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Maybe this was how they wanted to do it all along.

“On Load and ReLoad we tried to get a little looser, a little bluesier,” said Hetfield in 2009. “Greasy is the word. I love to riff, to down-pick, alternate-pick, gallop… That’s what I’ve always wanted to do.”

With Hetfield working this muscular redux of Duane Eddie’s electric guitar tone, clearly Kirk Hammett wanted to get in on the twang, choosing a Fender Esquire. We’d have expected him to play “Greeny”, his 1959 Les Paul Standard, previously owned by Peter Green and Gary Moore. Or maybe his factory black 1959 Les Paul Standard. But the twang was the thang and the tone was on the money.

The performance was streamed via YouTube, but there is some cool fan footage that captures the reworked Fuel. The band was joined by San Francisco-based multi-instrumentalist Avi Vinocur, who also played on a rare performance of The Unforgiven II, which hadn’t been played live for nine years, and on ReLoad deep cut Low Man’s Lyric – that really is a rarity. The last time that was played for an audience was 1998.

That one had not been played since 2015. Though, in fairness, we can’t remember being at too many Metallica shows where the crowd has been crushing cans of beer on their foreheads and baying for Low Man’s Lyric.

There were more guests. Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam joined them for Kill ‘Em All rager Hit The Lights. Master Of Puppets closed the set. Delivered straight-up. No messing around.

James Hetfield of Metallica is insistent that Metallica won’t ever rest on their laurels and become a ‘legacy’ band.

In a recent appearance on the Metallica Report podcast, the frontman discussed how the band were slotting in songs from last year’s 72 Seasons album into setlitsts on their current world tour and how they will never rely wholly on their extensive back catalogue.

“The fact that the 72 Seasons album is well received and some of the songs that we’re playing live work and they kind of fit seamlessly in with all the catalogue, all the albums we have,” explained Hetfield. 

“We’re not afraid of (playing new songs), but we’re not overindulging in it as well. We know people want to hear the best of, and you’ve got to challenge them to listen to some of the new stuff as well.”

“We certainly don’t want to be a legacy band that just plays its greatest hits and then that’s it,” he added. “(Playing new material is) all a part of it.”

Becoming a ‘legacy’ or ‘heritage’ band is something most, perhaps all, A-list acts end up having to succumb to eventually. Rare is the artist whose work is still vital after 25, 30 or 40 years on the rock n’ roll treadmill. 

Some embrace it fully, others begrudgingly accept that their best years are behind them and fans invariably come to shows not to hear the latest album but for ‘the hits’ that they associate with their own summer years. Metallica sound like they’ll be in the latter camp, forever raging against the dying of the creative light.

In the same podcast Hetfield said that the band were currently playing with a lot of confidence, The reason, he suggests, is because they’re comfortable with making the odd mistake. Indeed, by the sounds of it, they are - in the sage words of Brian Eno - honouring them as their hidden intention.

“All mistakes are a part of the show,” Hetfield argued. “That’s part of what we say before we go out. ‘Hey, all mistakes are free.’ And it’s not a mistake, really. That word is kinda ridiculous. It’s just a unique way of playing (a song) that night.”

“Frankly, I think it's a challenge, when a song falls apart and it could be devastating to other bands,” he continued. “For us, it's just, ‘OK, we fucked it up. Let's start it again. Or, ‘Hey, let's take it from here.’ Or, there's been times when I've edited out a whole middle section and then at the end of the song say, ‘Oh my God, I forgot to play that part. Here, let's just play it for you.’”

“There's a freedom up there that the fans allow. There's a grace that they allow us to be human. So there is a confidence that you can't go wrong. You show up and you do your best and you know it's from the heart.”

"I'm so grateful it doesn't shut off," says James Hetfield of his desire to keep playing music, even when he's off the road. "Whether it's just an escape from life or whatever it is, I love my little music room basement. I've got a computer and a few guitars and a little rig set up. It is my soul-nourishing place to go in there and just play, and write."

The Metallica legend checked in with The Metallica Report podcast for a rare interview as the M72 world tour gets back underway, and as is often the case with the big man when he does speak publicly these days – he's candid about his fears as well as hopes as a musician.

"My faith and where it comes from is strong," he says of his lyric writing. "And just like when you're onstage and you don't know what you're going to say, that sacred moment when you walk up to the mic and you say what you're supposed to just then. Trusting that moment, trusting the moment the lyrics will be there when they're supposed to. 

"The lyric journey is kind of its own thing," adds Hetfield. "Music, yeah, it's a collaboration of all of us. Then lyrically, I can freak out, like I don't know what to write about. Then I just start somewhere and it ends up going somewhere else. You start somewhere then, oh that kind of sounds like this story or that sounds like this character or whatever. Then you have the metaphor of what does it mean. There's a deeper, vaguer attachment to something else that hopefully everyone can relate to so it's not just about my struggle with darkness or whatever. There's definitely a theme there but [it's] being able to riff off of that and go to other places. So yes, trusting that it will find its uniqueness."

But Hetfield admits he's well aware that faith and confidence in his creative process can be undermined: "The mind is the enemy most of the time," he notes. "And just trying to avoid that overthinking and then just stream of consciousness – just be connected to a higher power or whatever you want to believe in. That what's supposed to come through me is supposed to right at that time, and not will it to happen."

By now you'd imagine Hetfield knows the Metalica back catalogue off by heart ahead of a tour. Then you remember just how demanding his role is physically and mentally as the rhythm guitarist, vocalist and frontman for the biggest metal band on the planet. He's well aware of that pressure too.

"Over the last month I will say the normal thing happens when I start to doubt myself, I start to feel insecure that we're too old and we can't do this blah blah blah – all that bullshit that everyone tells themselves before they go into something that they care about, that's important. 

These fears can manifest themselves in Hetfield's dreams.

"Having the nightmares of, I'm the only one who cares about what we're doing here – where is everyone?" he recounts. "I show up at the gig and everyone's goofing off and there's 200 people backstage and where's my stuff? Where's the setlist? What songs are we doing?

"And then typical things of, oh the guitar neck is made of rubber and there's only to strings on it, and where's my roadie? The cord won't let me get to the microphone – silly stuff like that that has to happen, and I don't freak out over it."

Instead Hetfield trusts the process that's served him well.

"You practice, and it comes back pretty quickly. It's part of the cycle – it still is. You have anxiety buildup and don't let it get the best of you because you have that balance of anxiety and faith, and as soon as you get up there it's gonna be good."

Hetfield's acceptance that things don't always go to plan onstage is reflective of the personal growth he's made in recent years.

"There's no reason to feel self-conscious about something that goes wrong at the show. It's like, hello! It's happen. Let's deal with it. And the old me of fear, anger, shut down and blame, or whatever – why?"

Check out the full podcast interview above. For Metallica's summer tour dates visit metallica.com

• "If it gets mushy at all, he's out": Metallica producer Greg Fidelman confirms James Hetfield used a very specific blend of four amps together in the studio for the 72 Seasons album

Some years are watershed moments in musical history, and 1991 was one of them. It was the year that grunge broke and that hair metal was given a shove out of the mainstream. It was also the year that Metallica released Metallica. Forever known as The Black Album, it was the record that capitalised on the success of their previous release, And Justice For All, and established the San Francisco quartet as the biggest metal band in the world.

Although it featured five hit singles – Nothing Else Matters, The Unforgiven, Sad But True, Wherever I May Roam and Enter Sandman – it was the latter that really caught the public’s imagination, reaching No. 5 in the UK chart. 

“It’s a riff and a song title pretty much,” James Hetfield revealed on a 1991 documentary about the genesis of the band’s songwriting process. “Especially since this time we’re doing the simpler tunes. One of the songs is like two riffs in the whole song with different singing over it, which is pretty cool.”

He’s talking about Enter Sandman. With its doomy, clean-picked minor-key riff, haunting lyric and massive sound, it was the track that set the template for the rest of The Black Album, both in sound and in atmosphere. 

Getting Bob Rock in as producer was key to Metallica’s maturing sound. The aptly named Rock was the man behind both Mötley Crüe’s Dr Feelgood, The Cult’s Sonic Temple, and he had mixed Bon Jovi’s massive Slippery When Wet and New Jersey albums. At first glance he was not necessarily the best bedfellow for a Bay Area thrash band, but as drummer Lars Ulrich explained Metallica had “not been too happy with any of the mixes on the last three albums, and we thought one of the best-sounding albums we’d heard in the last few years was Dr Feelgood. Bob seemed to be able to bring out the best in whatever bands he was working with”.

And he certainly did with Metallica. Decamping to One On One Recording Studios in North Hollywood, Rock insisted on the band playing together in one room instead of recording their parts individually.

“Originally, I was doing all the rhythms in the studio – the right speaker, the left speaker. It was a giant wall of guitar on every album until The Black Album,” Hetfield told Total Guitar later in 1999. “I played pretty much all of it except for solos. There was a lot of colouring, whether it was little hits or harmony guitars. Kirk would come in and do all the ripping stuff, which is out of my league.

“Before then I used to work on the rhythm with Lars without Kirk and Jason,” he continued. “That time we played as a band in the studio, and it gave us much more of a vibe. We were able to watch each other. That helped a lot, especially with some of the bass and lead stuff.”

Enter Sandman was the first song they began work on, born from a riff that Kirk Hammett brought in. “The riff that’s on the record and the way it exists today is not really the way he wrote it,” Ulrich relates on the Classic Albums documentary. Kirk’s initial idea was the first five-note refrain morphing straight into the power chord breakdown. But by chopping and repeating the first clean riff, and doubling it up on the bass, Sandman as we know it was born.

In 2023, the band appeared on Howard Stern's SiriusXM show and elaborated on how Hammett's 3 am riff idea morphed into the hook we know today, with some input from Lars Ulrich.

"He came up to me and said repeat the first part three times and then play the chords afterward," recalled Hammett. "So I said, 'Ok'". 

The drummer's role in songwriting for the band is often overlooked by those seeking to highlight perceived shortcomings in his drumming, but by James Hetfield's own admission, it was he and Lars who were the primary songwriters and arrangers for much of Metallica's history. It's only on recent album 72 Seasons that really began to change and the duo were more open to Hammett and current bassist Rob Trujillo's ideas. 

"Lars doesn't know how to play guitar and he will arrange stuff and he'll just say, 'Hey can't you do that thing in another key'", Hetfield told Stern – elaborating on Ulrich's role in Enter Sandman's writing. "Something that I wouldn't do, like Sandman for instance [plays Enter Sandman's arpeggiated clean part] and it changed the key. It's like, 'I wouldn't do that [usually], I can't pick that. Then it  would be a challenge, 'Ok, I can do that.' So there's a lot of pushing of each other. Same with drum stuff too."

Ah yes, we nearly forgot Mr Hetfield plays drums as well as everything else he's good at. "The main thing, thankfully with this bunch of guys, is when we go into a songwriting situation we leave our egos outside and it's not, 'It's my guitar – don't tell me what to play' or 'Oh, I'm the drummer – stay away,'" Ulrich told Stern.

"James will help out this part, help out that part –'Why don't you try on the toms'", added the Dane. "Of course! And I'll throw things back to James, 'Why don't you try a different key, why don't you down pick it or try galloping it, chugs instead of double-picking'… or whatever. There's that freedom because of trust, and when there's the trust, there's the love. Then you know there's nothing that's gonna happen by getting in everybody's stuff that's gonna affect the relationships, and that's a great thing."

Outside the band and despite initial resistance from the band to Bob Rock’s fearlessness at telling them what to do, the results swiftly had the band on-side. “We tried to expand every sound to the max,” remembered Rock. “We tried to get the guitars as big as possible, the bass as big as possible, the drums... You know, big and weighty.”

Metallica weren't initially enthused by the prospect of playing in one room. “They thought it was a lot of work,” Rock told Mix magazine, “and they didn’t understand it. This was the only way I knew how to make a record. To me, it was about capturing the feel that they wanted. I thought there was just this weight and size and heaviness in them that I never caught on their other records. 

"I’m not saying it wasn’t there," added Rock. "I think Kirk had the hardest time with it because he had to play solos for each take. But when it came time to do the solos, we listened to everything off the floor, and he got a lot of his ideas for his solos off of those.”

The producer also explained to MusicRadar in a track-by-track interview on the Black Album about how his fearless approach extended to Jason Newsted's bass approach and the prickly subject of Hetfield's lyrical themes.

“On Sandman, I asked Jason to play more like a bass player and less like a guitarist," he reflected. "Put that with the new perspective Lars had on drums and we had a song with a killer groove.

“At first, based on the music and the riff, the band and their management thought it could be the first single. Then they heard James’ lyrics and realised the song was about crib death. That didn’t go over well.

“I sat down with James and talked to him about his words. I told him, ‘What you have is great, but it can be better. Does it have to be so literal?’ Not that I was thinking about the single; I just wanted him to make the song great. It was a process, him learning to say what he wanted but in a more poetic and open sort of way. He rewrote some lyrics and it was all there… the first single.”

In those days, both Hetfield and Hammett were primarily ESP men onstage, but guitars including a Telecaster, Danelectro/Coral electric sitar and Gretsch White Falcon were employed for various clean parts throughout the album. Hammett would go on to buy some iconic Gibson models later, but already had an armoury at his disposal in the early '90s. 

Hetfield used a ESP MX-220 and MX-250 with active EMG 81 (bridge) and 60 (neck) humbucker pickups. This Explorer-esque shape was later renamed the EXP but would be discontinued due to Gibson's objections. Hammett, meanwhile favoured guitars including his (since sold) ESP Custom Shop KH-2 Ouija Board, 1989 black Gibson Les Paul Custom alongside a '61 Strat for cleans and ESP Les Paul-jr style guitar with EMG pickup. 

For the Black Album sessions there was a lot of guitar track layering involved, but Hetfield returned to his old favourite 'Crunch Berries' amp that's still a mainstay to this day.  “We tried a bunch of amps, but I ended up using the same Mesa/Boogie Simulclass Mark II [C++] that I've used on the last three albums," he told Guitar World in 1991. "In Los Angeles there are a million amps you can try out, but none of them were up to snuff. 

“Bob also brought in a bunch of crappy-looking vintage amps," added Hetfield. "We gave everything a shot and ended up with the same old shit. [Laughs] I must admit, though, it was a lot of fun trying out all those little '60s and '70s amps – they really sounded unique."

But it seems there was more to Hetfield's rig for the album than he was letting on in 1991. Engineer Randy Staub elaborated to Mix that there were more elements to the signal chain than the tried and true Crunch Berries: “We ended up building this huge guitar cabinet for him,” Staub remembered. “It might have had an old Marshall head, and that would be just one part of the sound. I think his standard setup was this Mesa/Boogie head and then all these other amps were there to fill in the sonic picture. It would generally have a scooped kind of tone.

"I think we had nine or 11 cabinets, Staub added. "Some stacked on top of each other, some on the floor, some baffled off from each other – and then we’d get this huge tent around this pile of cabinets curtained because as we were getting James’ guitar sound, he kept saying, ‘I want it to have more crunch!’”

Hammett's rig was a pricier affair. "I used a [Bob] Bradshaw preamp for the lows and mids, and a couple of Marshalls for the nice clean highs," he told Guitar World. "We EQ'ed it through the board a little bit, and it worked out great."

Neither is a sound the band can simply recreate live – which is perhaps one reason they've leaned into the use of the Fractal Audio Axe-Fx for Mesa and Diezel-inspired models in more recent years.

My live sound does not work in the studio, which is a completely different animal," Hetfield told Guitar World in 1991. "Every little thing is detrimental to the sound. And if someone moves a mic, you've lost it. It's pretty much a case of ‘lock the door and set up a police line.’”

ESP LTD Vulture James Hetfield Signature: What is it?

You could say it’s been a bit of a big 12-months for Metallica. The thrash innovators unleashed their eleventh studio album, 72 Seasons, to largely rave reviews, with fans delighting in the renewed sense of purpose and passion on songs like Lux Æterna, as well as the symphonic sophistication explored on its opening title track and epic closer Inamorata. This is why ESP have really timed the release of James Hetfield’s latest signature electric guitar so well – it feels like the world has gone mad for Metallica again and with good reason.

That said, this is not a completely brand-new model. The ESP LTD Vulture has been available in Satin Black for some time, but this Olympic White version feels more aesthetically pleasing and, dare we say it, elegant. 

It seems to show off the radical cut – the unique hook on the hockey stick headstock and the dramatic wings inspired by the Metallica logo – in a much more obvious way. And that’s not the only special feature here, either, as proudly demonstrated by the custom inlay graphic around the 12th fret and Hetfield’s initials on the truss rod cover. 

If you’re a Metallica fan hoping to nail the great man’s tones – from 1983 debut Kill 'Em All through to their most recent work – in theory, this guitar should do the trick better than other options in the same price bracket…

ESP LTD Vulture James Hetfield Signature: Performance and verdict

Our review model arrives in tune and well-protected in the fitted case that comes included. On closer inspection, the build quality and finish are as you’d expect with a mid-tier guitar, with no causes for concern whatsoever. And though the action out of the box is perhaps on the high side, this is very easily adjusted by the two screws on each side of the TonePros bridge – a locking version of the Tune-o-matic design closely associated with classic Gibson builds. Coupled with the locking tuners, this makes for a high-performance instrument that will resonate well and hold its tuning/intonation no matter what you throw at it. 

Plugged into an American-voiced high-gain amp with 6L6 power tubes, there’s an instantly familiar chug to anything you play on the bridge pickup – particularly if palm mutes are involved, as per Metallica favourites such as Master Of Puppets, Creeping Death and Through The Never. And it comes as no surprise that the EMG JH bridge pickup – a variant of their storied 81 pickup but with steel pole pieces instead of a bar magnet – absolutely roars its way through more open-sounding riffs like Wherever I May Roam, Sad But True and King Nothing. 

As for the JH neck pickup – his own customised version of the EMG 60 – it packs no shortage of warmth and sustain, with notes seemingly ringing out to infinity. The three-way pickup selector also has a middle position, which can work well for adding a bit more chime to clean tones when the neck may be lacking in definition, but it’s not really a setting Metallica tend to use. 

Watch the thrash metal pioneers in concert and Hetfield will spend the vast majority of the set on his bridge pickup, switching to the neck position only for clean sounds and rare lead moments in songs like Nothing Else Matters and Master Of Puppets. So it would be fair to say the bridge pickup is home for him tonally, though in any case, you can rest assured knowing both of these pickups are exactly the same as the units installed on Papa Het’s own instruments. 

As for drawbacks, it probably won’t surprise people that the active EMG pickups sound a bit too compressed for vintage clean tones – and while the JH neck is less extreme and more versatile than something like an EMG 85 – it’s still not going to work too brilliantly for country, low gain blues or surf rock. 

Similar things can be said of its visual appeal, as it’s a very striking and modernised take on a Flying V, and therefore more suited to hard rock and metal players than fans of early electric guitar designs. But if you’re hoping to dial in the same kind of tones as the world’s biggest metal band and wield a guitar that will turn heads wherever you may roam, look no further.

MusicRadar verdict: With two humbuckers, one volume and one tone control, this ESP LTD James Hetfield Vulture is simple enough in concept. But on closer inspection, it’s the signature pickups, locking tuners and bridge, custom inlay and, of course, that unforgettable body shape that make it a weapon tailor-made to seek and destroy.

ESP LTD Vulture James Hetfield Signature: Hands-on videos

ESP Guitars USA

ESP LTD Vulture James Hetfield Signature: Specifications

• Body: Mahogany
• Neck: 3-Piece Mahogany set neck with Thin "U" contour
• Scale Length: 24.75" (628.7 mm)
• Fingerboard Material: Macassar Ebony
• Fingerboard Radius: 14" (350 mm)
• Frets: 22 XJ (Extra Jumbo)
• Nut Width: 1.65" (42 mm)
• Pickups: EMG James Hetfield Signature "Het Set"
• Controls: 2 Volume & 3-Way Toggle Pickup Selector Switch
• Bridge: TonePros Locking TOM & Tailpiece
• Tuners: LTD Locking
• Strap Buttons: Standard
• Hardware Colour: Black
• Case: Vulture Form Fit Case included
• CONTACT: ESP Guitars

Join us for our traditional look back at the news and features that floated your boat this year. This story first appeared in May.

Best of 2023: James Hetfield hasn't done many interviews for Metallica's new 72 Seasons album, and he doesn't really need to; he says a lot in this hour-and-12-minute sit down with the band's So What! fanzine that you can watch below. And true to form of being increasingly candid as he's got older (and wiser), he comes clean about the creative approach in the band that's in sharp contrast to the one recently portrayed by former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted during his tenure. 

"We opened up," Hetfield reveals. "I was much more ready to open my heart to everyone in the band: lyrically, emotionally, and creatively. I was really an advocate, going out of my way to say, 'Send in your riffs. We need stuff, c’mon,' you know?" It's a far cry from the Hetfield/Ulrich dynamic of Metallica's past songwriting and demo creation Newsted recently reflected on the Let There Be Talk podcast. 

"I don’t want to sit there with [only] Lars and create the songs anymore" continued Hetfield. "I want everyone to be a part of it and be in it. Can we all show up? Can we all be in the studio together? Can we jam on these things together? Can you speak up and say what you think might be great and not so great? Really wanting to open it up, and there were challenges in that. But I think we got through most of ’em, you know?"

As Kirk Hammett recently told So What! himself, it allowed for him to contribute more to the writing process. But how did Lars take this new approach of "four chiefs instead of just two"? 

"Well, I think we all have fear of change," Hetfield replied. "We all have fear of change or, 'Wait, this is working, let’s just keep going with it,' you know? But as an artist, as someone who’s creative, I like those challenges. I don’t like them out in the regular life very much; I don’t like changes and challenges. But in the studio, I feel comfortable with it, and I think Lars eventually understood why and where I was trying to go with it. And even if there wasn’t input from others, just having that white space for input was great.

"You know, there would be times when all four would be in the studio, and Lars would be looking at me [asking], 'What do you feel the next part is?' And I would just be quiet. Just say, 'What do you guys think? What are you guys feeling?' It felt really free to kind of just sit back and let the process happen more. And yeah, it did take longer, and we might’ve gone through ten ideas that didn’t work to get to one that did, but if you’re not out there mining for gold, you’re not gonna find any. So there were nuggets that came out of it that were just amazing."

Hetfield also spoke about the tones behind 72 Seasons, and why he's always chasing better like the rest of us. 

"I'm always, always searching for better tone, always searching for a better guitar sound," he admitted. "And I end up with stuff I’ve used before because it just sounds the best, and that’s okay. It’s helping me speak.

"There’s the Copperhead guitar, Copper Top, whatever you want to call it, but it’s the copper one that’s a snakebyte that has been painted horrendously thick and shouldn’t sound good at all. The pickups have been painted! It’s got the tone. It sounds great as a main guitar, so that one always gets put down first. I used it a bunch on Hardwired. The So What! guitar got some play, the EET FUK guitar showed up a lot as a second guitar."

Those two are icons from Metallica history; a 1984 Gibson Explorer and 1987 ESP MX220, respectively.  

"But the guitar that probably showed up more on any of the songs besides the Copper Top was the OGV, you know?"

This is the first electric guitar Hetfield used in Metallica; the Electra V that Hetfield bought in 1980 for $200 and was used on Kill 'Em All. It was retired following a neck snap in '84 but made an unlikely comeback before the recording of 2008's Death Magnetic. 

"It’s hanging up in the control room, and I get to pick it up and play it," said Hetfield. And with all of its nicks and damage… rings pounded holes in it, scrapes and this and that, especially on the neck, it’s just a minefield that’s been destroyed. It feels comfortable, great, it plays easy, and it sounds lively and young. So that guitar is probably never going to go away, I think. Hopefully, it’ll come with me to the grave."

The guitar's shared history with its owner is a like a doorway to another time. 

"It does remind me of the Kill ’Em All tour, for sure," he explained . "It just does. That was the only guitar I had, so it’s got to remind me of that. But we’ve been through hell, and we’ve been through heaven together. It has definitely died a few times and come back to life. The neck’s been broken on that thing, the headstock’s come off three times, and the tailpiece just broke on this album. But it’s a survivor, like me, and this guitar has been a great friend."

• Jason Newsted calls And Justice For All the best garage duo album ever: "There was never any big bass on Metallica's albums until the Black Album"

Join us for our traditional look back at the news and features that floated your boat in 2023. This story was originally published in November 2023.

Best of 2023: Greg Fidelman has developed a close working relationship with Metallica that saw him co-producing their latest album 72 Seasons with James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, as well as its two predecessors, Hardwired… To Self Destruct. In a two-hour chat with Dave Friedman and Marc Huzansky on their Tone-Talk podcast, he lifted the lid on the way Hetfield tended to work with him on guitar tones in the studio.

 "With a player like James, when you get someone who is that in-tune with what they're doing and what they're trying to sound like… he's pretty particular," remarked Fidelman of Hetfield's nose for the tube amp tones he likes. "If it gets mushy at all, he's out… I often want to put more gain [on] than he likes. Same thing with Kirk. They both [say], 'It's getting a little too dirty'… so it's always a back and forth. 

"It's interesting sometimes when you get those guys – especially when they grow up with older style amps," the producer reflected. "The highest gain amp in 1983 is probably considered a clean amp now or something. They grew up with that feel and they still like – they're still used to it."

One of Fidelman's tasks for 72 Seasons was to present and manipulate a blend of Hetfield's amp heads for the guitarist's approval while he tracked, sometimes emphasising one over the other depending on the parts. And it was loud – up to a dozen cabs were mic'd up in Fidelman's studio. 

"There's always a combination of amps," confirmed Fidelman. "[For James] there was the José [read on for more on this amp], the[Mesa/Boogie] MkIIC++ [aka the 'Crunch Berries' amp] he's had forever, a Diezel, a Plexi Marshall kind of [Canadian brand] Wizard but with a Klon pedal in front of it. And those four amps are always running, and depending on what the song is or whatever, the blend between those amps changes so it's not always four amps at the same time, but usually it's three.

"There's usually one that's the main thing, then [another] just adds a little of that [and another] a little of this. It's always crazy – you'll hear the sound and then solo the Wizard or whatever and you'll think, that sounds ridiculous, that doesn't sound good at all. Then you mute that and you're like, 'Oh s**t the bottom just dropped out'. You can't imagine when you listen to it by itself that it's doing what it's doing. It's an interesting thing that happens. 

"And again, if I push the wrong thing [James] might be, 'I'm losing the facial thing I had a minute ago – it sounded more aggressive before and now it's too boomy or whatever'. And a lot of that has to do with the balance of the amps, or the mics I suppose. But it's quite loud in the amp room… it gets pretty hairy"

The 'José amp' Fidelman refers to is a Marshall late '60s / early '70s Super Lead modded by late tech José Arredondo, who was friends with Eddie Van Halen but it still remains unclear if he ever modded the late legend's Plexis. In an interview with Total Guitar Fidelman noted the amp wasn't working very well during the sessions for the Hardwired album and before starting work of 72 Sessions, called Friedman to see if he could help. In the podcast chat the amp designer confirms what work he did on Hetfield's modded Marshall amp.

"There were all sorts of weird things with that amp, and some broken things," begins Dave Friedman. "One thing I had to do is there was a 200-watt output transformer in it, which isn't stock to the amplifier and I'm not sure why it was ever there. I don't know why it was ever put in there. So we changed it to a 100-watt output transformer, one of mine. And I went through the circuit and went through everything and I made it sound good. It's still the mod, I didn't sit there and alter the thing – I just made it the best it could sound. And it did sound really good."

Hetfield agreed. "James loved it and that amp is a major part of the sound that he had on this last record," responded Fidelman. "He loved it and it's all over the record. It became of the amps that made up his main rhythm sound." 

The Arredondo mod to Hetfield's Plexi is known as the three-in-one mod, resulting in adding a gain stage. "It's not massively high-gan or anything," noted Friedman. "Real guys don't use that much gain really. That is the worst thing you can do for a mix – you want more percussiveness and you want more clean, and it'll sound bigger. Much larger and better tone – when you start stacking guitars especially."

• James Hetfield on Metallica's new creative era: "I don't want to sit there and create the songs with Lars anymore – I want everyone to be a part of it and be in it"

The Metallica rhythm guitar sound is a reference quality electric guitar tone for generations of aspiring metal guitar players who have cranked up and down-picked in the hope of nailing James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett’s signature style. 

There is a temptation to find a high-gain distortion pedal to help your amp along but Hammett himself would argue against it, and in conversation with Rick Beato, he has explained how the secret to his – and Hetfield’s – uncompromising rhythm tone is to use less gain, not more. 

Not everyone agrees, he says, but Hammett has sound rationale for showing a little restraint.

“My rhythm sound it is a lot cleaner than you think,” he said. “Greg Fidelman [producer, Metallica’s 72 Seasons] is always pushing me to just add more distortion but I only like a distorted rhythm sound to an extent, because I need that punch. I need to feel like the strings are hitting [me]. I need to hear every single string when I hit a chord, and I need to like one note and you can feel it.”

There is a risk there, of course. That clarity comes with an obligation to play the part right, and not just to play it right but to perform it, to give it enough oomph to make it work. 

The alternative, says Hammett, is dialing up the gain and then you lose the definition and, ultimately, the riff loses its punch.

“If you have too much distortion it feels like a sponge, it’s spongey,” he said. “I need [punch]. I need bark. I need to hit it. I need it so when I go ‘doonk!’ you physically feel it, and James is the same way. And it has always been that way. It has always been that way for him, and it has always been that way for me.”

Speaking to MusicRadar in 2016, James Hetfield said he and Hammett were always searching for that “bark”. He described it as an ever-evolving process, a never-ending quest for Holy Grail tones in which the secret is in the midrange.

“For me it’s got to be percussive,” said Hetfield. “It’s got to push air, what we call bark. It’s got to bark. But I don’t want it really abrasive, so any fake fuzz to me really just takes away from the sound. 

“And it’s tough because when you turn guitar sounds down, you really hear what they sound like and when you push them up it sounds a different way. So we’re trying to find that balance of enough mid push while still sounding big and what I’ve found is the wider and bigger you make it sound the thinner it becomes in a way, at least depth-wise.”

Hammett shared a few more insights into his signature tone in his conversation with Beato. He detailed the evolution of Metallica’s sound, from the modded Marshall that gave Kill ‘Em All its aggro crunch, to the Mesa/Boogie Mk II C+ – then state-of-the-art tube amps that would become the cornerstone of the band’s sound from Master Of Puppets to now. 

This is an amp that has become the stuff of legend, most recently in the news when Neural DSP captured the Mk II C+’s uncompromising sound and considerable tone-shaping capabilities in a VST guitar plugin. 

Hammett recalls visiting Mesa/Boogie with Hetfield in tow, getting a two-for-one deal on them and then taking them on tour in support of Ride The Lightning, learning how to dial them onstage, and setting the scene for that Master Of Puppets rhythm crunch.

“It was what we wanted, what we needed at the time, and that was the amps that we took into the studio from 1985 to now,” Hammett said. “We’re still using them.”

• Interview: Metallica's James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett on their tonal evolution, the art of the riff and justice for Lars

What you won’t find Hammett using is reverb or delay. The wah pedal is an ever present. There will always be a Tube Screamer on his pedalboard – just for the leads “because the gain needs to be tight, harmonically tight”. Delay pedals, though? No, too easy, and it feels wrong.

“I am not much for delay, or reverb,” he said. “Some of my favourite guitar players always have delay on, like Neal Schon always has his delay on. I love Neal Schon. One day I went and started playing, [though] my amp. and then adding a little delay, and I thought, ‘I like playing with delay but it kind of makes it easier. [Laughs] And I thought, ‘I’m not going to play with delay anymore.’ Y’know, there’s something about the note just hitting me. It feels like when there’s delay it’s going away from me, and, yeah, to certain extent it is.”

You can check out the full conversation above, and subscribe to Rick Beato’s YouTube Channel here. 

Metallica are on tour right now, taking their “no repeats” M72 World Tour across the US right now. Tonight (18 Aug) they are in Arlington, Texas at the AT&T Stadium, and will be back again in a couple of nights for a second – and completely different set. See Metallica for tickets details and more dates.

James Hetfield has revealed that he and Lars Ulrich were bored on Zoom when he came up with the riff to Inamorata, the 11-minute epic that closes out Metallica’s new album, 72 Seasons, and the longest song the band has ever recorded.

Speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in the vast expanse of the Johan Cruijff Arena, Amsterdam, AFC Ajax’s home stadium, Metallica were discussing the size and scope of their M72 Tour, the origins of the Snake Pit, and the connection with fans when Lowe asked them about the riff. 

Just where does something like that come from? 

As it turns out, Hetfield is not so sure, but it’s certainly Black Sabbath-inspired. Sometimes it just comes out the electric guitar, an element of Iommi-by-osmosis to writing riffs like that. But where it actually came from was a Zoom call with Ulrich, and like most Zoom calls, the general vibe was tedium.

“Written on Zoom, by the way,” said Hetfield. “Lars and I sitting there, fiddling around, trying to connect over Zoom and write. The Pandora’s box was opened at that point. We’re bored, let’s do some stuff. And that was one of the riffs that came out of that session.”

The boredom soon disappeared when they knew they were onto something. Ulrich, who has been Hetfield’s most-trusted songwriting partner and arranger since Metallica started, knew there was something in it. The raw materials were there. Quite how it would end up they weren’t sure but it was the type of riff that invited further investigation.

“It was special from the first moment,” said Ulrich. “It was special. It obviously didn’t start off as an 11-minute song but it wanted to keep going, and there was a feeling as the ideas continued to show up that the song was calling out for, ‘now we’ve got to take these detours and now we’ve got to go here, this bass breakdown…’ 

“I hear all the riffs, and these guys have to let me sort of cherry-pick the ones that will turn into songs, and from the first time I heard that, I thought, ‘That sits somewhere else.’”

The Black Sabbath influence is undeniable. When asked about Inamorata, co-producer Greg Fidelman, who was there throughout the sessions for 72 Seasons, had a different recollection of how that riff came together, telling Total Guitar that was a riff from the tuning room, a pre-show idea that was written in C#.

“Yeah, I think Inamorata is in C# or some very bizarre key,” said Fidelman. “I don’t know why James was in C# when he was coming up with it. When we started working on it we said: ‘This is a weird key. Maybe should try this in A or in E?’ But for some reason that’s just not as cool. You’d think, ‘Let’s put it lower, it’ll sound even heavier.’ But it was the opposite. 

“When we tried it in more common keys, everyone was like, ‘Now I don’t like it so much!’ So we embraced that challenge of writing a heavy song in C#. You don’t really have a lot of open strings as an option in that key, so it was to come up with some ideas that we may not have otherwise come up with.”

Writing riffs in C#, one of Tony Iommi’s favourite tunings, is invariably going to invite comparisons with Black Sabbath, and it might well put you in that headspace, too. But Hetfield says all of this is unconscious, telling Lowe that he has know idea where they come from – and nor does he want to find out.

“I don’t think about it, man,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool. Thank you, Tony Iommi. Or whoever I just channelled. Or Cliff [Burton], whoever it is, thank you. Or thank you guitar for spitting that one out.’ It just happens. I can’t explain it, and I don’t want to know. I am a messenger, a vessel of riffs, and Lars has the spectacular ear of, ‘What was that!? Play it back.’”

72 Seasons is out now via Rhino/Blackened Recordings. Hetfield, Ulrich and company’s next stage of the M72 World Tour takes place on 17 May at Stade de France, a two-night stint that sees them return two days later. 

As per their self-imposed rules for this epic run, they will play two entirely different setlists on each of the nights. See Metallica for full dates and ticket details and check out the full Apple Music interview with Zane Lowe above.

Inamorata might have started out on that Zoom call with Ulrich but earlier this week Hetfield spoke of Metallica’s new creative era when he sat down with the band’s So What! fanzine for a candid interview about the songwriting process and how he wanted to involve Kirk Hammett more. 

“I was much more ready to open my heart to everyone in the band: lyrically, emotionally, and creatively,” he said. “I was really an advocate, going out of my way to say, 'Send in your riffs. We need stuff, c’mon,' you know?”

There is one sure way to start an argument and that’s to ask the most contentious questions in metal guitar: what is the heaviest riff of all time? 

The question invites generational dispute; between ‘70s long-hairs against the neck-tattooed cohort of the post-Destroy Erase Improve epoch, between those weaned on the radioactive milk of ‘80s thrash and those tuned down to nu-metal’s 7-string registers. It pits the underground against mainstream consensus, bandmate against bandmate, and Revolver has just opened this can of worms again, polling performers at Louder Than Life 2022 festival for their thoughts. 

The video segment shows you just how split opinions are, just how vexing the question is. John Dyer Baizley of Baroness looks like he’s passing a kidney stone at the very mention of it.

“This is a hot take,” he protested. “I’ve got to come up with the heaviest riff of all time right now? That’s such a hard question.”

But sitting along side bassist Nick Jost, he could just about agree that Metallica’s Sad But True, track two of the era-defining Black Album, took the cake. “In terms of power versus execution versus reach in the audience, Sad But True,” said Baizley.

They weren’t alone. Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale and Arejay Hale co-signed Sad But True, but argued that Pantera’s Cowboys From Hell and Pantera’s Cowboys From Hell should be in the conversation alongside Jerry Cantrell's riff on Alice In Chains’ Check My Brain. 

“Jerry is so famous for those heavy, sludgy, weighty riffs,” said Arejay. “I think we gravitate towards those riffs that are really heavy and weighty rather than really flashy. [But] In terms of weighty, heavy and aggressive, maybe Sad But True, yeah.”

Orbit Culture’s Niklas Karlsson and Richard Hansson were in agreement. Even after 30 years of metal’s evolution, Sad But True retained its power. It was the riff that came up the most. Metallica’s Enter Sandman got a couple of mentions. Airbourne cited Fuel. Perhaps surprisingly, given how often Metallica came up, there was not no mention of The Thing That Should Not Be or Blackened.

Speaking to MusicRadar in 2011, Bob Rock, the producer of Metallica’s Black Album, said when he first heard Sad But True he thought it was “the Kashmir of the ‘90s” but he had one suggestion to make, and it would help make it the heaviest track on the record.

“They played me the demo, and I told them I thought it was the Kashmir of the ‘90s,” said Rock. “The riff was astounding. To my knowledge, they never had anything so heavy, so punchy and powerful. Rhythmically, I could tell it had the potential to be absolutely crushing!

“We were in pre-production, which was uncomfortable because nobody had ever made them go through their songs in such a deliberate way before, and six songs in Sad But True came along. Suddenly, I realized that every song, including this one, was in the key of E.

“I brought this to the band’s attention, and they said, ‘Well, isn’t E the lowest note?’ So I told them that on Motley Crue’s Dr Feelgood, which I produced and Metallica loved, the band had tuned down to D. Metallica then tuned down to D, and that’s when the riff really became huge. It was this force that you just couldn’t stop, no matter what.”

Tuning down was a theme among Revolver’s subjects. Suicide Silence guitarist Chris Garza cast his vote for Korn’s Blind, a track that single-handedly launched nu-metal as a pop-cultural force, and reanimating interest in Steve Vai’s signature Universe 7-string guitar.

“There is something about that riff, that record,” he said. “It’s heavy. I am a rhythm guitar player. There’s a darkness to a rhythm guitar player that really has the wrist feel that way and sound that way. There’s something about that riff is darkness. And you see it live and… Korn is the heaviest live band of all time. When they play Blind, that riff? Come on.”

There was a lot of love for Pantera. Lamb Of God’s Redneck was in the conversation alongside various shouts for Gojira (Flying Whales, Where Dragons Dwell, The Heaviest Matter Of The Universe). But Courtney LaPlante, vocalist for Spiritbox, made a persuasive case for Meshuggah’s Bleed, from 2008’s obZen.

“I think, technically, the heaviest thing that I’ve ever heard would be just the opening riff from Bleed by Meshuggah,” she said. “The thing that makes it so heavy for me is just how fast the double-kick is and how low the guitar is. It’s also the way the riff speeds up and slows down when they are bending it, the way the double-kick is interfering with the guitar.”

Of Revolver’s subjects, only Taipei Houston’s Myles and Lane Ulrich went all in for Black Sabbath's Into The Void. Andy Glass, bass guitar wrangler for We Came As Romans, also cited Iron Man, though as much an afterthought to Meshuggah face-ripper Rational Gaze.

Once upon a time, opinion might have coalesced around vintage Black Sabbath. Tony Iommi at his heaviest – think Into The Void, the breakdown in Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, the eponymous Black Sabbath intro riff, Lord Of This World – remains unimpeachable.

In 2020, Metal Hammer polled pro guitarists and Iommi’s Symptom Of The Universe riff came out top. 

When Speaking to MusicRadar, Iommi said that the sign of a riff working was how memorable it was. Those that didn’t stick, got left behind. This was how Paranoid came about.

“You had to remember riffs back in the old days,” he said. “When we did get a tape machine it was a big reel to reel but in the early days we’d have to keep playing the same thing so we’d remember it, because you’d forget. We’d rehearse again the next day and everyone would come in. You’d ask, ‘Does everyone remember it?’ ‘I think so…’ and you’d have to try and drum it into yourself but you might play it slightly differently.”

You can check out Revolver’s vox pops with metal pros above. What else did they miss off? Death metal was underrepresented, though kudos to GWAR’s Pustulus Maximus for repping Dehumanized’s slept-on brutal death metal classic Prophecies Foretold, and Deicide’s superlative Once Upon The Cross, and to Anders Fridén of In Flames for mentioning Crowbar’s Odd Fellows Rest.

There was no Procreation (Of The Wicked) by Celtic Frost, no Where The Slime Live by Morbid Angel, no… oh, it’s contentious. Maybe we need to put it to the vote and run another poll. That should settle it, right? No chance...

The world is changing apace but some things remain the same, the iron laws of physical science remain unmoved – gravity, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, and that one that says there is no higher power in metal guitar than the unerring power-chug of James Hetfield’s merciless right-hand.

That’s right, new Metallica song, same relentless downpicking from the greatest rhythm player in metal as Screaming Suicide, the second track released in advance of the San Francisco Fab Four’s upcoming studio album, 72 Seasons, showcases pretty much everything you would expect from a five-minute ‘Tallica jam.

But with sold-out stadium shows serving as focus groups affirming this direction, why change course now? 

Screaming Suicide opens with a Kirk Hammett lead melody, an electric guitar tone teetering on the edge of squawk with the – shock, horror – wah pedal used as a filter. 

The lustrous splash of Lars Ulrich’s hi-hat keeps the count. The rat-a-tat of snare drum announces Rhythm Figure 1, all churning, midrange crunch, with the band reverting to the monochrome jugga-jugga of Rhythm Figure 2, where, suitably warmed up, that picking hand is locked in. 

The kids, as they say will love it, particularly that bridge section that allows for a little bit of baritone spoken word from Hetfield, a moment to dial it down a bit and build the dynamics for the final furlong, and the chance to bang the heads that didn’t bang. It’s textbook Metallica.

The track comes with an important message, too, with Metallica tackling “the taboo word of suicide” in the lyrics.

“The intention is to communicate about the darkness we feel inside,” reads a statement from the band. “It's ridiculous to think we should deny that we have these thoughts. At one point or another, I believe most people have thought about it. To face it is to speak the unspoken. If it's a human experience, we should be able to talk about it. You are not alone.”

• Classic interview: James Hetfield – "I’m able to show Lars some drum stuff and he’s able to show me riff stuff"

Screaming Suicide comes just under two months after Lux Æterna, and the announcement that 72 Seasons will hit record stores and streaming platforms on 14 April.

The release will be followed by a big ol’ massive tour of various stadia in Europe and North America, kicking off on 27 April in Amsterdam at the Johan Cruijff ArenA, home of Ajax. See Metallica for full dates and ticket information for the M72 World Tour.

The tour will find Metallica playing once more in the round, playing two-night stints at each venue, with two entirely different setlists, “no repeats”, and the tantalising promise of “enhanced experiences” – which include meet-and-greets, the opportunity to watch the set from the ‘Snake Pit’, or a platform by the production tower, pre-show drinks lounges, and all sorts.

Metallica will release 72 Seasons on 14 April through Rhino/Blackened Recordings.

Metallica frontman and undisputed champion of heavy metal rhythm guitar James Hetfield has teamed up with Ernie Ball for a limited edition signature set of electric guitar strings.

The Papa Het’s Hardwired Master Core Signature set promises enhanced pitch stability and strength from a hitherto unreleased gauge combo, and they come in a tin with custom artwork from the Metallica man himself.

Hetfield’s new strings run 11, 14, 18p, 28, 38, 50, and look to be an augmented version of Ernie Ball’s hard-waring Paradigm series. Heck, Ernie Ball even makes the description of the technology involved sound pretty darn metal: “Wound strings are wrapped with Paradigm plasma-enhanced nickel plated steel around ultra-high strength tin plated steel hex core” says the release. 

Such is the way with guitar strings, these may well prove to be disposable heroes, but all in good time. These are designed to be played hard. That’s where the Master Core comes in.

Now, this Master Core does not immediately confer knowledge of the many riffs and time changes in Metallica’s 1986 magnum opus, but instead refers to a heavier core to wrap ratio; in short, your wound strings have been working out, building strength to deal with all those pulverising downstrokes. Papa Het sounds delighted. 

“With all the companies we're with, we're super proud to be with Ernie Ball!” said Hetfield. “For them to take on the challenge of, hey I got an idea, can you do this… they have stepped up to the challenge! I'm super proud!”

Even the greatest guitar players love the feeling of a fresh set of strings. Papa Het’s Hardwired Master Core Signature String are available now via Metallica, and worldwide via the usual outlets on 10 May. They are priced $34.99. See Ernie Ball for more details.

• Video lesson: Learn to play Enter Sandman