100 Greatest Songs of the 2010’s #11 Metallica – Hardwired

Released : 2016

There comes a point in any successful musician’s career where they have a choice: become a greatest hits juke box/pension fund amongst a group of people as old and comfortably dressed as you are, or try and reach back to the essence, the reason why you picked up an instrument in the first place.

There’s another saying that you can’t have it both ways, but on Hardwired To Self Destruct Metallica gave that teleportation back to their younger selves and nudging their bank balances up a dual shot.

It almost worked, for two reasons, the first being that they can pretty much get away with anything now having served their dues – the prosecution would draw your attention here to Lulu, their banal collaboration with the late Lou Reed – but also because the opening song on it was just so unarguably retro kickass.

Hardwired thrashes like a rattlesnake in a lucky dip, James Hetfield deadpanning it’s apocalyptic portents whilst the band career through it at hardcore tempo, the whole thing a throwback to when rawness and energy came before everything else. This was music for Morlocks, but that was surely the point.