Featured Playlist

- Set List: Metallica’s M72 World Tour
- 16 Songs
- Metallica · 1991
- Metallica · 1991
- Ride the Lightning (Remastered) · 1984
- ...And Justice for All (Deluxe Box Set) · 1988
- Master of Puppets (Deluxe Box Set) · 1986
- Reload · 1997
- Metallica · 1991
- Metallica · 1991
- Metallica · 1991
- Ride the Lightning (Remastered) · 1984
Essential Albums
- The band’s epic songwriting emerges on this thrash-metal classic.
- Thrash metal’s first—and most ferocious—album turns 40.
- 2023
- 2011
- 2008
- 2003
- 1997
- 1996
- More than just help invent metal, they've grown with it.
- These clips capture all of the band's ferocity and ingenuity.
- The hard-riffing heroes who shaped the thrashing sound of these metal innovators.
- The thrash legends' concerts are as varied as their albums.
- Everything and anything the legendary drummer thinks you should hear.
- 2023
- 2022
Compilations
- 2006
- 1998
Appears On
- Mexican Institute of Sound
- Flatbush Zombies
- The Neptunes
- Vishal Dadlani, DIVINE & Shor Police
Radio Shows
- Hear music and artists that motivate the Metallica drummer.
- Why the imperfections of “Seek & Destroy” make it perfect.
- Conversation with the band in Amsterdam.
- “If Darkness Had a Son” lives up to all of the hype.
- Conversation around the band's history and self-titled album.
- The guitar duo from Mexico join Strombo to talk about Metallica.
- The artist on her cover of "Enter Sandman" with The Warning.
- Frontman Michael Poulsen on the band's connection to Metallica.
More To See
About Metallica
Metallica didn’t just help invent heavy metal, they evolved with it. Formed in 1981 when a “dorky, disenfranchised” teenager in Orange County, California—Lars Ulrich, his words—placed a classified ad name-checking Iron Maiden and Diamond Head, the band debuted in 1983 with Kill ’Em All and pioneered the blinding synthesis of punk and British metal we now call thrash. Having moved to the Bay Area in the early ’80s to court bassist Cliff Burton, the band—Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett, guitarist-vocalist James Hetfield, and Burton—went on to fashion metal into a kind of art form, eschewing the glammy appeal of hair metal for ultra-serious, progressively complex song-suites that explored subjects like suicide, political corruption, and the psychological horror of war. (Burton was killed in a bus accident in late 1986 and replaced by Jason Newsted; the band regrouped for 1988’s epochal … And Justice for All.) Even as they became a global phenomenon in the wake of 1991’s record-breaking self-titled album, Metallica remained defiantly on their own path, dabbling in Southern rock (1996’s Load), high-concept dirges (2011’s divisive Lou Reed collaboration Lulu), stripped-down hardcore (2003’s St. Anger), and orchestral live albums (1999’s S&M). Their story is, in essence, the story of metal itself: a push-pull of simplicity and complexity that continually challenges our understanding of fast and loud.
- HOMETOWN
- Los Angeles, CA, United States
- FORMED
- October 28, 1981