Hear Remastered Version of Metallica's Smoldering Budgie Cover From 1987 | Revolver

Hear Remastered Version of Metallica's Smoldering Budgie Cover From 1987

"Crash Course in Brain Surgery" take appears on Big 4 thrashers' upcoming 'Garage Days Re-Revisited' reissue

This Friday, April 13th, Metallica will reissue The 5.98 EP - Garage Days Re-Revisited, a hard-to-find covers EP dating back to the summer of 1987. Two days before the street date, the Big 4 thrashers have unveiled a remastered version of its fourth track, their smoldering take on "Crash Course in Brain Surgery," originally by the NWOBHM band Budgie in 1971.

Speaking with Revolver recently, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich framed "Crash Course in Brain Surgery" as one of the release's riskier offerings, along with their cover of Killing Joke's "The Wait."

"'The Wait' and 'Crash Course in Brain Surgery,' those were songs we didn't really have a history with," he explained. "They weren't songs that we'd played before. It was more of an exploratory path we were on with that."

The 5.98 E.P.: Garage Days Re-Revisited is up for pre-orders on Metallica's website now. It'll be available in a variety of formats, including limited-edition lenticular longbow, picture, disc and cassette packages.

Elsewhere in Revolver's conversation with Ulrich, the drummer detailed the band's covers selection process, their early shows, the cramped, two-car garage where everything came together and much more. "When we write our own songs, we're so anal and so detailed, and when we record our own songs, it's so precision-based," he explained. "With cover songs, you just play, and you lose yourself in the music." Read the whole interview here.

Below, watch Metallica tear through an epic rendition of Judas Priest's "Rapid Fire" joined by Rob Halford: