Watch Metallica Perform & Talk Stranger Things On Kimmel
Metallica have a whole lot going on right now: a new album coming out, a world tour starting up, a marching band competition. They’re also just now starting a full week on Jimmy Kimmel Live, where they’ll play live every night. The band will get into the classics at least a little bit during this week; Kimmel mentioned that they’re playing all of “Master Of Puppets” on Wednesday. But the band does have 72 Seasons to sell, and they kicked off their late-night week by doing business.
Before last night’s performance, all four members of Metallica sat down with Jimmy Kimmel. (Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo sat in the back and didn’t say much, which seems disrespectful.) “Master Of Puppets” came up, of course, because of its big viral Stranger Things moment last year. James Hetfield: “We wrote that song for Stranger Things in, what, 1980-something. We knew it was gonna happen!”
During the interview, Hetfield also talked a little about the marching-band competition and the way that Virginia Tech has adapted “Enter Sandman” as a fight song: “The fact that we get to play and love what we do, and someone takes that and puts that in their own sense, and then they get their whole audience pumped up for their team to play — it’s double-cool.” Kimmel also got all four of them to name the first album that they ever bought. Lars: Deep Purple’s Fireball. James: An unspecified Lynyrd Skynyrd record. Robert: Santana’s Abraxas. Kirk: the Partridge Family Christmas album.
For the first of this week’s performances, Metallica tore into “Lux Æterna,” the first single from 72 Seasons. And look: That song might not be in the Metallica hall of fame or anything, but when you watch those guys playing it in real time, it takes on an impressive physical urgency. They’re still Metallica. Watch the performance and the interview below.
UPDATE: Here’s video from nights 2 and 4…
On night 3, Metallica learned how to master puppets.
72 Seasons is out 4/14 on Metallica’s own Blackened label.