That night, Hetfield and Hammett shredded their approach by means of the anthem. Afterward, Hetfield handed off his guitar and strode towards the pitcher’s mound. The throw was good. Sturdy, assured, unwavering. Straight throughout the plate.

In July, the Netflix sequence “Stranger Issues”—which follows a bunch of rangy, anxious teenagers as they try to avoid wasting their dwelling city from a spooky different dimension referred to as the Upside Down—débuted the second a part of its fourth season. The present is the platform’s most watched authentic sequence. The primary protagonists are devotees of Dungeons & Dragons and members of one thing referred to as the Hellfire Membership, which is led by a candy metalhead named Eddie Munson. Within the season finale, Munson, who preaches nonconformity as a sort of sanctifying observe, volunteers—spoiler alert!—to sacrifice himself, and does so whereas standing on the roof of a trailer within the Upside Down, taking part in the guitar solo from the music “Grasp of Puppets.” (The season is ready in 1986.) Two weeks after the episode was launched, “Grasp of Puppets,” which is greater than eight minutes lengthy, appeared on the Scorching 100 for the primary time, at No. 40. (The present gave the same enhance to Kate Bush’s “Working Up That Hill (A Cope with God),” which got here out in 1985.) “Grasp of Puppets” entered the Prime Ten on Spotify’s U.S. chart, and the Prime Fifty on its world chart; quickly, it had been streamed greater than half a billion occasions.

Unsurprisingly, older Metallica followers discovered the eye annoying. It’s simple to overlook that, within the mid-eighties, publicly figuring out as a Metallica fan usually meant being labelled a druggie, a weirdo, a creep; again then, an individual suffered socially for an allegiance to thrash. The concept that true steel fandom requires weathering such stigma is foundational and long-standing. But the band was fast to embrace its new acolytes. Metallica’s members even filmed themselves sporting Hellfire Membership T-shirts and jamming alongside to footage of Munson’s solo. In a pinned touch upon its official TikTok, the band clarified its open-door coverage: “FYI—EVERYONE is welcome within the Metallica Household. Whether or not you’ve been a fan for 40 hours or 40 years.” Effectively, high quality. The solo was recorded for the present by Tye Trujillo, Robert Trujillo’s eighteen-year-old son. The hope was that it could sound uncooked and frenetic, as if a teen-ager had been taking part in it. “I don’t suppose Tye absolutely understood how this factor was gonna blossom,” Trujillo instructed me. “I favored that. At our home, we don’t have an entire lot of TV going on a regular basis. We dwell in Topanga Canyon, and there’s a whole lot of time to play music and make artwork and go climbing and browsing. In some methods, he’s sheltered from the power round these sorts of issues. There’s a purity there, which I really like.”

In late July, Metallica headlined Lollapalooza, in Chicago—its first U.S. date for the reason that “Stranger Issues” finale aired. When the band first performed the competition, in 1996, the reserving angered Perry Farrell, Lollapalooza’s co-founder and the entrance man of the alt-rock band Jane’s Dependancy. “Lots of people had been pissed,” Burnstein instructed me. “I perceive how Perry felt—like his different factor was being co-opted.” He added, “After all, there was Perry final evening backstage, saying hello to the fellows.” Lately, Lollapalooza is generally indistinguishable from some other main American music competition. The weekend’s different headliners included the pop star Dua Lipa, the rapper J. Cole, and the pop-punk band Inexperienced Day. Within the wake of “Stranger Issues,” Metallica was now probably the most newsworthy act on the invoice.

The evening earlier than the present, the band met in Grant Park to movie a brief skit with Joseph Quinn, the twenty-nine-year-old British actor who performs Munson. “You’re taller than on the TV,” Hetfield joked, shaking Quinn’s hand. The band took Quinn into its tuning trailer to jam. “I’ll offer you a 4 rely,” Ulrich stated, drumsticks aloft. Quinn left with a signed guitar; the video was posted to the band’s social-media accounts. Afterward, the band went onstage to rehearse. It had rained earlier within the day, and the bottom was slick with mud. I stood on a bit of plywood in a largely empty discipline and watched Metallica heat up.

Hetfield has developed right into a magnetic entrance man. Early on, he stated, his stage persona—cocky, aggressive, laborious—was largely aspirational. “Being up onstage is a fantasy world,” he stated. “Everyone seems to be on the market sprinkling you with fantastic mud. You begin to imagine it, and then you definitely get dwelling and also you go, ‘The place’s my mud?’ ” he stated. “Not so fantastic now, sitting right here alone with two cats, taking the rubbish out.” On tour, he stated, the times off are tougher than the times on. There’s nowhere to funnel the power; time turns into an odd, liminal expanse. “My physique is drained, however my thoughts continues to be going. What do I do with that?” he stated. “I simply ask individuals within the crew, or pals, or my assistant, ‘Hey, are you able to simply sit down and watch TV with me?’ ” “Moth Into Flame,” a music from “Hardwired . . . to Self Destruct,” is in regards to the intoxication of celeb. “I imagine the habit to fame is an actual factor,” Hetfield stated. “I’ve obtained my little restoration posse on the highway to assist me out. We’ll say a prayer earlier than going onstage: ‘James, you’re a human being. You’re going to die. You’re right here doing service. You’re doing one of the best you may.’ That’s useful for me.”

The next afternoon, the park full of 1000’s of Metallica shirts, a lot of which appeared conspicuously new. The ambiance backstage was relaxed. I sat on a wicker sofa with Robert Trujillo and drank a model of canned water referred to as Liquid Dying. One of many group’s trailers was labelled “Yoga.” Shortly earlier than Metallica’s set, I climbed a riser on the sting of the stage in order that I might see each the band and the group. Pageant units might be laborious—a lot of the viewers had been bobbing within the late-July solar for 9 hours by the point Metallica took the stage—however the power was excessive. “Grasp of Puppets” has been a fixture on the band’s set checklist for many years, however now it’s been granted additional prominence as the ultimate music of the encore. As Hammett started to play the solo, footage of Eddie Munson appeared on enormous screens flanking the stage. The group went nuts. I clung to the sting of the riser. For a second, it felt as if all of Chicago had been shaking.

After Metallica’s set, Ulrich rushed off to the Metro, a rock membership close to Wrigley Area. His two oldest sons—Myles and Layne—play in a superb bass-and-drums duo referred to as Taipei Houston, and had a gig opening for the British band Idles. “That was the previous, that is the long run!” Ulrich joked, sprinting towards a ready S.U.V. sporting a navy-blue bathrobe with the hood up. On the Metro, he stood within the V.I.P. balcony, glowing with satisfaction. After the set, as Myles and Layne dutifully broke down their gear, Ulrich chatted with the membership’s proprietor, Joe Shanahan, in regards to the first time Metallica performed the Metro, in August of 1983, opening for the steel band Raven. Ulrich was nineteen.

Later, over tea at his lodge, I requested Ulrich in regards to the “Stranger Issues” phenomenon. He leaned again, sanguine: “If you happen to and I had been sitting right here twenty years in the past, thirty years in the past, again then it was actually solely in regards to the music. Partaking in these kinds of alternatives would have been thought-about promoting out. However the tradition is a lot extra forgiving of these kinds of issues now.” He continued, “If you’ve been round so long as we’ve got, you must sort of ebb and movement. I don’t suppose there have been any writeups about Lollapalooza this morning that didn’t point out Eddie, didn’t point out ‘Stranger Issues.’ And it’s not like ‘Eh, what the fuck, is the music not ok?’ It’s like . . . it’s cool.”

In 2021, the band launched “The Metallica Blacklist,” a set of fifty-three covers of songs from the Black Album, in honor of the document’s thirtieth anniversary. Twelve of the fifty-three artists selected to cowl “Nothing Else Issues,” which Hetfield wrote when the band was on tour in assist of “. . . And Justice for All.” Elton John as soon as in contrast “Nothing Else Issues” (favorably) to “Greensleeves.” It’s, by my accounting, Metallica’s first music about romantic love. Hetfield might be coy about its origins—he missed his girlfriend; he discovered that feeling embarrassing—however additionally it is true that, since its preliminary launch, “Nothing Else Issues” has come to sound much less particularly romantic and extra like an ode to any sort of life-sustaining devotion. It’s technically a waltz, but it surely feels just like the final of the good energy ballads: momentous, tortured, cathartic, triumphant. The Metallica neighborhood usually talks in regards to the observe as a fan anthem of kinds. In moments of deep communion with the band and its music, nothing else issues. It’s an emotional music, however a terrifying one, too. “What’s heavier than love?” Scott Ian stated.

This kind of vulnerability was as soon as anathema to Metallica—“What I’ve felt, what I’ve recognized / By no means shined by means of in what I’ve proven,” Hetfield sings on “The Unforgiven”—but it surely now feels central to the band’s mission. The singer and songwriter Kris Kristofferson, a longtime supporter, praised Metallica’s humanity and good will. “I’m an enormous fan of their music, however much more so of the outstanding human beings they’re,” he instructed me. “All coronary heart.” In dialog, I discovered Hetfield heat and disarmingly open. He usually inquired after my child daughter. After I talked about that I used to be having a tough time sleeping in my lodge room, he jogged my memory that it was vital to have one thing from dwelling. “My daughter gave me these stones—what are they referred to as? Crystals,” he stated. “You’ve gotta convey one thing. A pillowcase, some lavender oil.”

One afternoon, I requested Hetfield if he felt as if he’d lastly discovered the life and neighborhood he’d all the time needed: he lives in Colorado, searching, beekeeping, spending time outdoor; he sees pals; he excursions with Metallica. He paused to think about the query. “Will I ever admit that I discovered it? Will I ever permit myself to be completely happy sufficient to say I discovered it? Perhaps that’s a lifelong quest, the seek for household,” he stated. “When my household disintegrated, early on in life, I discovered it in music, I discovered it within the band. I keep in mind Lars being the primary one to purchase a home and have pals over, and I used to be, like, ‘Who’re these individuals? You didn’t invite me! You’re dishonest on me with one other household!’ Clearly, our followers have grow to be a sort of worldwide household. However on the finish of the day they are saying they love you and also you sort of go, ‘O.Okay. . . . what does that basically imply?’ ”

However they do not less than love a model of you, I ventured—the model of you that exists within the work.

“Yeah, and what model is that?” Hetfield countered.

It was a naïve thought, presuming that he might cloister or delineate a self within the context of a band he has led his complete grownup life. “Metallica is greater than the person members,” Burnstein instructed me. “And to some extent, of their lives, they’re subservient to the thought of Metallica.” That feeling of obligation has stored the band going, by giving form to what its members have sacrificed. “The fifth member of Metallica is the collective,” Ulrich stated. “Folks say, ‘What does Metallica imply to you?’ It’s only a fuckin’ . . . it’s a way of thinking.” He paused. “Metallica is the entire power of the universe. We simply steer it alongside.” ♦