James Hetfield discussed METALLICA‘s current setlist with Rolling Stone, saying:
“The drum-corps thing [during ‘Now That We’re Dead‘] is my favorite moment in the show lately. [Laughs]
“I don’t know if it works or not, but I love it – it’s fun, and I’ve dreamt about doing something like that for a long time. It’s been on my list of ‘Things to do live’ for a long time, and it’s finally, finally come to fruition.
“My other favorite part of the set is the intro to ‘Halo on Fire.’ It’s just me out there and it’s total freeform. “I’m just making it up on the way out there. I like stuff like that.”
Every time METALLICA plays “Sad But True“, Hetfield asks the crowd, “Do you want heavy?”. Read what he says about that:
“We’re still on the search for the ultimate riff, the ultimate lyric, the ultimate drum beat, the ultimate bass line. We found a lot of good ones, but there’s still more. ‘Sad But True‘ was just one of those riffs. I remember when we played it for [producer] Bob Rock the first time when we were demoing stuff, trying to find a producer, and he was blown away by that riff. He said something like, ‘It’s the “Kashmir” of our days’ or something.’ Like, OK. ‘That means good.’
“As for the actual line, ‘Do you want heavy?’ I think I lifted that from King Diamond. There was a live tape of Mercyful Fate in the early Eighties, where he was talking some funny rap onstage about, ‘I see some discos out there.’ It was broken English, trying to say, ‘I see some fans of disco.’ So he’d say, ‘I see some discos out there. Why don’t you get outside. We’re here to play heavy. We’re going to give you heavy!’ And I just kind of borrowed that. It became one of those things before ‘Sad but True.'”
He continued about the song “Seek and Destroy“:
“We’ve been on the constant mission of making everyone feel like they’re in the front row, so Lars had the idea of going out there, and then it felt like, ‘Hey, this is kind of like the garage again, and let’s play “Seek and Destroy.”
