"Here's a little something we cooked up over the last few days," Metallica posted across their social media accounts late in the day on Friday, May 1st. "Hope you're all safe & sound. Have a great weekend."
Just what the thrash OGs had cooked up was a stripped-down, countrified rendition of their hyper-speed Eighties classic "Blackened," recorded by the four band members while quarantined at their separate abodes. The video above offers not only a fascinating reworking of the ...And Justice for All opener, but also a peek into James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Robert Trujillo and Lars Ulrich's everyday lives at home off the stage. A bespectacled Hetfield sings and strums his acoustic guitar in what appears to be a small office, Hammett shreds in front a sliding glass door revealing an bucolic vista, Trujillo rocks out in a nondescript space complete with a clothes rack hung with jackets, and Ulrich pounds away at his kit in a home jam room.
Since being sidelined from the road by the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting social-distancing restrictions, Metallica have been doing their part to keep homebound fans entertained with their "Metallica Mondays" concert series, which sees the band unearthing epic, professionally filmed footage of full shows and broadcasting them on the group's YouTube channel and Facebook page. In addition, the group has responded to the coronavirus crisis through their nonprofit organization, All Within My Hands, by donating "four grants totaling $350,000 to organizations dedicated to assisting those hit hard by the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic."
