30. Dear Metallica

Not too long ago, I finished and published a letter to George Harrison that I had sporadically been working on for weeks prior. It was kind of a love letter of sorts, where I talked about my immense love of the Beatles and of George Harrison’s solo works, but it ended up being much more in-depth and soul searching than I had anticipated when I got started on it. Because of that, I decided it’d be a while before I did another letter to a group or to a person or whatever.

When I heard your new album 72 Seasons, I wanted to do a review on my site. But each time I sat down to write a review, I kept running into an immense “I’m talking about one thing, but what I really want to be talking about is another thing” roadblock. I want to talk about your album, but what I really want to talk about is you guys and my history with y’all as a group. So here I am, writing another damn letter. I knew my Beatles letter would require me to open up a bit and that’s still not very easy for me to do. But a Metallica letter? That’s going to require me revisit some parts of my heart-mind-soul that have been locked away behind lock and key for a long, long time.

But as I sit here on a Saturday night with an open computer, the idea of spilling everything out into the public sphere is both daunting and filling me with dread. There’s this writing trope I do occasionally where I talk to my inner thoughts as if I’m debating myself or having a discussion about my psyche or whatever, but I always know exactly what that is. That voice in my head is my anxieties. Or it’s my self-doubt. Or it’s my brain doing mental gymnastics as I try to work through complex thoughts. But every so often… every… so… often… that voice is just fucking mean. And it can’t really be reasoned with and it can’t be bargained with. And it just kind of is there for a period of time. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes for a couple days. Sometimes for a full week. I have that right now. Depression is a real motherfucker, dude. Try some cutesy writing shit where I talk to my depression? It’d chew me up and spit me back out in 5 seconds flat.

I really, really want to write, though, so here I am. But that fucking voice in my head is like “this is dumb. You’re dumb. Writing is pointless.” With my anxieties, I can get cute with it. I can have a discussion. But if I want to write about my depression, it’s over and onward and through. Power the fuck through this.

I don’t really want to talk about how I got into Metallica because it feels very boring. I got into Metallica the same way everyone got into Metallica; by watching their breakthrough video “One” on MTV. I don’t want to talk about how even though I liked their Black Album, it was kind of embarrassing to be listening to a song like “Enter Sandman” while the cool music of the moment (which I also liked) was the stuff coming out of Seattle. Or I don’t want to talk about how I like metal music, even though much of it is corny as fuck, what with all the cheesy satanic and/or wizard imagery that dominates its lyrics. I don’t want to be talking about any of that, yet here I am.

The simple truth of the matter is that Metallica really mattered to me. It mattered to me a lot. James Hetfield will never get any poetry flowers, but the dude knows how to take you, the listener, inside. He knows how to place you, the listener, in the shoes of a soldier on a battlefield. He knows how to place you in any number of places. He knows how to place you, the listener, in the soul of a broken person. And boy oh boy was I there for much of my youth. I’ve spoken about this elsewhere but my parents’ divorce really fucked me up. Getting split up from my siblings really fucked me up. Moving from my family home to Dallas with my mom where I got into actual (for real) legal trouble and was heading down a dark path… it fucked me up. Moving back to Houston to live with my dad in a living situation where my dad and stepmom actively made it difficult to discuss our feelings… it fucked me up.

So for me, I really welcomed the sound of heavy metal. It really really really really really was a musical release valve for me. That crunchy riff fueled music made my insides vibrate just as much as any Beatles record ever did. I needed that fucking sound. On occasion, I still do.

Metallica’s music and James Hetfield’s lyrics have 100% gotten me through some pretty intense “dark night of the soul” (yeah yeah I know that’s not what that expression means) moments. I’ve never actively sought to harm myself in any concrete way. I’ve never made plans or thought about self-harm as an actuality. But like a lot of people, I’ve had those “do I even still want to be here” moments of doubt or contemplation. I had them all the time as a kid. And just full stop, Metallica has always been there for me. If I’m feeling like shit, I put that music on and just kind of ride the wave (or lightning, as it were) until I feel better. It always helps.

I don’t have as much need for Metallica as I get older. So when I listen to their music now, it’s usually out of a sense of nostalgia (in the same way I’d listen to Led Zepplin or Black Sabbath or …whatever). I got out of Metallica everything I needed to get out of them and I stand here as living proof that their music works. I also listen to them because I admire their technical brilliance on both the instrumentation side of things but also on how they construct a song. They’re still really great at that. I definitely don’t have as much need for their new music. Here’s my quick review of their new album 72 Seasons. It’s fine. It’s okay. It’s not for me. But I do love that they’re still out there doing their thing. I love that there might be some 12 year old pimply faced dork who is feeling alone and sad who is putting on Master of Puppets and is powering through the music and is coming to the realization that they want to stick around for a bit. That’s the good shit. I’m high-fiving that kid and head banging with him to “Damage Inc.”

So that’s basically what I wanted to say with this letter. To James, Lars, Cliff, Jason, Robert, and Kirk… thank you. Thank you for saving lives. \m/

Matthew