The Dangers of a Single Story

Death as Metallica’s Magnum Opus

There are many reasons to support the notion that our culture is a culture of death. Legalized abortion is one of those reasons. The death penalty is another. Having a constitutional right to owning guns could be another. Even the so called War on Terror could be conceived as fueling this notion of a culture of death here in our own turf, not thousands of miles away where we are convinced the real terrorists are.

    

But what about music as an instrument of death; as its dispenser? One might say that's a ridiculous claim since few things are as constructive to elevate the soul and the spirit as the exercise of music. Music, good music, has the power to take you to other worlds and make you see things you hadn’t seen before through the solemn act of listening. Why then some types of musical expression are more conducive to the oppression and destruction of the soul than others?

     

There’s a musical genre known as heavy metal. One of its subgenres is thrash metal. Heavy metal music in general, but thrash metal in particular is a prime example of what I mean by some kinds of musical expression that are more conducive to the oppression and destruction of the soul and the spirit than others. In short, thrash metal bands cannot exist without the howl of death pounding on their inner being. One of the earliest proponents of thrash metal in the United States is a band founded in 1981. The band's name is Metallica.

    

Death as a subject has been a staple in Metallica’s discography since day one. In fact, we can go back to even before the band was founded. Death touched the band’s frontman and lead singer, James Hetfield, when his mother Cynthia died of cancer in 1979. James was 16 years old. His parents had divorced just three years earlier.    

Metallica founding members were Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield. Less than a year later after founding Metallica they put out their first demo No Life ‘til Leather. A decidedly remarkable turn in the band’s grim thematic future would take place when Ulrich and Hetfield unanimously decided to fire then lead guitarist Dave Mustaine due to the deadly combination of drugs, alcohol and an inclination to violence that characterized the guitarist. Whether this violent inclination was already there or was the direct outcome of abusing the former two is beside the point. It’s almost certain that had this trio remained together Metallica would have had a violent and sudden early death. The band would have crashed even before take off.

Mustaine’s disposal from the band is significant because of the glaring differences in songwriting style and thematic vision between him and Hetfield. The Mechanix, written by Mustaine and later to be rewritten by Hetfield under the title The Four Horsemen for the band’s first studio album Kill ‘em All, was a sexual metaphor where the man is the mechanic and the woman is the car. How original, isn't it?

The first line of the song goes Imagine you were at my station… Apparently, Mustaine wasn’t only into drugs and alcohol. True to the heavy metal mantra of sex, drugs and rock and roll, it shouldn’t surprise anybody that the subject of sex would surface early on in Mustaine’s brief songwriting stint with Metallica.

Once Hetfield took his rightful place in the driver’s seat of the Metallica speed metal machine, it could be argued that a different songwriting destiny was set on course for the band. Mustaine’s The Mechanix became Hetfield’s The Four Horsemen. Same melody, different lyrics. And those lyrics couldn’t have been further away from each other.

The Four Horsemen charges ravagingly with only one real mission to accomplish, your death. The first line of the song reads, By the last breath of the fourth winds blow… Hetfield’s retake on the song could not have been truer to what the band stood for as thrash metal maniacs--belong to this new forceful and explosive deadly thrash metal crusade or else. Hetfield would not treat his preferred thematic subject as superficially as Mustaine had his. And so death reigns supreme throughout an album titled Kill ‘em All. On the cover of this album there’s blood, a sledge hammer and a hand in the background signaling the perpetrator of the crime, namely murder. That was in 1983.

In the two following studio albums by Metallica, Ride the Lighting (1984) and Master of Puppets (1986), the elaborate treatment of the subject of death would be the product of an evolving and more mature songwriting by Hetfield and fellow band members Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammet and Cliff Burton. Just about every song in Ride the Lighting touches the subject in varied ways. From the suicide cry of Fade to Black to the Exodus biblical story of Creeping Death, death reigns supreme.

I don't know which of Metallica's studio albums is the best. I stopped being a fan quite some time ago, although I haven't become oblivious to the band's existence. I think it's important to observe and critique culture. Metallica is one huge element in today's American and world pop culture. It's been so for years now if the numbers are an indicator.

In high school I went as far as owning the band's first four albums. I have to give these Metallicats credit for their musical craftsmanship in those four albums. They set the stage and became a single defining moment--a Four Horsemen unit in themselves--in the heavy metal genre. They're forceful, diverse and innovative albums within a genre that may well be saturated and tired. Metallica themselves know this to be true.

Now, the word out there is that Master of Puppets is the bombest of the bombs in thrash metal discography. Master of Puppets definitely surprises due to its combination of sheer force, speed, intricate rhythms and melodies, thematic diversity and creative songwriting. And yet, from beginning to end the song remains the same. From the first song in Puppets--Battery--we hear,

Crushing all deceivers, mashing non-believers / never ending potency / Hungry violence seeker, feeding off the weaker / Breeding on insanity. 

This song is an anthem for metal maniacs everywhere delivered to you in a carefully crafted robe of destruction. It's not just the music, Jack. It's what is conveyed with and within the music that, after continual listening, has a hypnotizing effect on the unsuspecting victim. The very last song of Puppets has this line for its chorus,

Blood will follow blood / Dying time is here / Damage Incorporated

I guess we can all tie the knots here.

But Metallica wouldn't just keep on writing about death in all its forms, shapes and colors happily ever after. It wouldn't be long before death came home to pay its respects to such loyal devotees. 


In 1986, while on tour to promote the album in Sweden, a bus accident claimed the life of Metallica's bassist Cliff Burton. The Metallica story could have truly ended there, but somehow death had other plans. Why dispose of such faithful proponents all at once? one might suspect death asking itself. The only thing that ended beside Cliff's life was the tour. It would be a blow that would take them about two years to recover from before they were back in the studio and out on the road.

And so Metallica went on to climb to the top of the charts and the world bringing it's message of death to the metal masses wherever they may roam with their subsequent albums. This didn't happen without their stumbles. It seems that a bass curse had been set in motion within the band. The first loss the band had back when they didn't have any notoriety was their original bassist Ron McGovney. According to some sources, he quit the band due to conflicts with then lead guitarist Dave Mustaine. Shocking, I know!

Bassist Cliff Burton died on the road after helping establish the Metallica brand. Then after fifteen years of having a tormented and dysfunctional relationship with his band teammates, bassist Jason Newstead, who also help cement the band's reputation around the world, dealt the Metallica establishment a deadly blow. He exited the band having had enough of the nonsensical misery his fellow band members had put him through. Unlike Mustaine, who still lives with a chip on his shoulder, Newstead would wake up the next morning to find out there's life after Metallica.

Robert Trujillo became Metallica's latest bass player in 2003. Having been a Suicidal Tendencies and Ozzy Osbourne bass player, he came in with good credentials plus the added blessing that his finger picking was reminiscent of Burton's back in the day. He seems to be doing just fine with his current fellow band members. To his advantage, they're older guys now and have realized for the sake of their band and fans that it doesn't make any sense to spend all that energy putting a fellow band member through hell just like they had done to Newstead. Let's just sing about it seems to be more appealing. All's well in the family now and I pray Trujillo lives to tell the story, a much livelier story than Newstead's. 

So where does this take us?

It takes us to 2008 and the release of Death Magnetic, Metallica's ninth studio album. In an article titled Metallica find life again in death, published on 18 February 2009 in telegraph.co.uk, we read the following,

Death Magnetic, then, saw Metallica return to their fast and furious roots. Its lyrics, though, offer a more grown-up take on a time-honoured metal theme.

"Yeah," says Hetfield with self-deprecating chuckle, "it's the new subject of death – we've never ventured there before. As a kid, I would write about death, like, Woah! It's heavy! This time it was a little more thoughtful, more from within, more or less based around the near-death experience of Metallica. So it was, What would that mean?" 

 

Maybe they haven't realized some of the most serious implications of an album titled Death Magnetic, but then again they may be well aware of them since by Hetfield's own admission Metallica almost died around the circumstances dealing with the recording of St. Anger, their 8th studio album. There's a passage in the Bible that speaks about the relationship between anger and homicide, which is premeditated murder. In fact, the Bible makes no difference between the two. (Matthew 5:21-22)  Metallica's discography is quite revealing!   

It seems that Metallica has now come full circle. In the cover of Death Magnetic there is a coffin shaped hole in the ground with (guess what?) a coffin in it. The earth is surrounded by magnetic waves. Can you feel the pull of death? That's the whole graphic point. The ripple effects of Metallica’s deathful platform have now extended beyond its inner circle of band members to the outer circles of its fans. The perennial four horsemen of thrash metal have recently come to know once again that to sing about death is one thing and to be dealt a blow by its hands is entirely another. Death, the kind of death you don't sing about, is an extremely painful matter.  

At a concert in Charlottesville, Virginia, last October, Metallifan and Virginia Tech student Morgan Dana Harrington, 20 years old, disappeared after leaving her friends on the stands to go to the bathroom at a Metallica concert. Somehow she found herself outside the John Paul Jones Arena on the University of Virginia campus and was not allowed to go back in. Her last communication was a cell phone call she made to her friends in the arena to let them know she was OK and that she would find a ride home. Three months later in late January 2010, Morgan's remains were found in a hay field nearly 10 miles away from the concert arena. 

So what was Metallica's role in Morgan's death? None, at least directly. The following may be construed as an unfair stretch from the circumstances surrounding Morgan's death, but the fact remains that her disappearance and untimely death happened in the context of a concert of a world famous heavy metal band known for its penchant for death. This band is unapologetic about this fact. Go ahead and ask them.

Metallica has gone on for about 30 years pushing its metal message of destruction and  death to the world. That's a long time. Their written record is massive and impressive. On the wings of Death Magnetic, they have landed right back where they took off, Kill 'em All. Death and burial. It is as if with this album they wanted to finish what they started. Cause and effect. Action and reaction. It makes sense because according to the band, Death Magnetic is a return to their musical roots, a rediscovery of the speed and raw power of thrash metal at its best.

  

I wonder who or what has charted this path for Metallica. Would it be possible that the trajectory the band has taken over the years, surprising twists and painful turns included, has been the result of a well thought out plan by the band's members? Or have there been greater forces at play that have taken care of all the comings and goings of the band? Has Metallica been the captain of their fate and the master of their soul? Hardly. When you embrace death as the subject of your life's work, it is death that calls the shots in your life. Metallica did not have any more control over the death of Cliff Burton than they did Morgan Dana Harrington's. Of course, this is not an absolution. Only death has control over death unless someone more powerful says otherwise. Metallica's Magnum Opus has never been Metallica's. All along it has been the other way around. Metallica has been death's master work; a supreme pawn or better yet the ideal puppet, subservient to Master Death's wishes.

 

This is the grim reality about death. The more you talk about it, the more you are obsessed with it and enslaved by it. The more you think you know it the more it eludes you. The more you rehash the subject, as Metallica has done so well, the less powerful you are to escape its grip. The great irony about death is that it doesn’t want to die so it submits its loyal proponents in the thrash metal scene to its own glorification in order to stay “alive and kicking”.

So far it's death that has had the last word in the history of human life. And Metallica, as so many before them, will soon one day, ready or not, meet its master. After all this years, Metallica has treated death as the blessing that keeps on giving. They kid themselves. Death is nothing less than the curse that keeps on taking. They wait in line.

This is also a somber reality about death--its greatest fear is being no more. It would truly hate to be served a lethal doses of its own medicine. And therefore, as a master dodger, death is so far so successful. For where there’s no death left only life remains. The kind of life that goes on unscathed and unthreatened—eternal life. Thrash metal bands are so far and at the same time so close to this subject of eternity, by way of their treatment of death, that it’s mindboggling how they cannot stop and think that there's a much better alternative altogether. They purport the end of life in the most gruesome ways; have an affinity to all things deathly; and 

seem to have fun while doing it. Do they even know what fun is? Death certainly isn’t.

So what does this mean for Metallica? Not much, unfortunately. They have milked the death cow far too long to know any better or to do any better or to want to do any better. I'm not anticipating their changing such a tune anytime soon. They couldn't care any less if there's an actual culture of death, while they themselves are evidence that such a culture exists.  The World Magnetic Tour goes on according to plan. Yes, Metallica posted a missing person announcement for Morgan Dana Harrington on their website. Yes, they offered $50,000 as part of the reward towards any information leading to solving her disappearance. And yes, left behind are those who mourn Morgan today. Who's to blame? The Four Horsemen? Lucky for them, life (or death depending on how you look at it) goes on.

No remorse / No repent / We don't care what it meant / Another day Another death / Another sorrow / Another breath (No Remorse from Kill 'em All, 1983)   

Death is Metallica's Magnum Opus, objectively. But as stated earlier death is Metallica's master, just as objectively. 

The question then becomes When will the death song end? According to Metallica, the death song will end with the very last verses of Death Magnetic, 

But we cross that line

Into the crypt 

Total eclipe

Suffer unto my apocalypse!

 

Tyrants awaken my apocalypse! 

Demon awaken my apocalypse!

Heaven awaken my apocalypse! 

Suffer forever my apocalypse!  

There's an alternate take to the end of the death song. It's found in the Bible,  

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. [...] Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.  (1 Corinthians 15:21-22, 24-26, NIV)
cspellot, 2010

Rodrigo y Gabriela