Metallica. Just saying their name makes your heart beat a little faster.
How do you summarise the career and impact of a band this formidable?
We could talk about how enduring they are (they've been around 40 years). We could talk about how many albums they've sold (it's over 125 million). We could talk about their commanding influence on both the mainstream and underground (here's one tiny example).
But none of that gets to the crux of what makes Metallica a true force of nature.
It's in their songs: both the pummelling thrash classics and intricate, sensitive ballads.
It's in the way they play: with the passion and force of people who were born to do nothing else.
It's in the looks on the faces of the band's millions of fans when that enormous riff or epic drum fill kicks in during one of the band's many timeless metal classics.
Metallica. There's simply no other band like them.
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