There was recent news that Tom G. Warrior of Celtic Frost was not pleased with Metallica playing “The Usurper” at a recent concert. In a recent article from Rolling Stone, Warrior said of the Metallica cover, “They butchered it, and it was humiliating. Why don’t they leave their millionaire fingers off it? They’ve long lost the ability to play true metal in my opinion. Maybe I should go onstage and do a really miserable version of [Metallica’s] “Hit the Lights” with, like, 200 mistakes to set the balance.”

Metallica‘s Kirk Hammett and Rob Trujillo covered Celtic Frost’s “The Usurper” in Switzerland back in May. Warrior has been busy with his new band Triumph of Death, which made their live debut in June and will play Psycho Las Vegas on Saturday, August 17, 2019. Warrior’s other band Triptykon may have one or two albums on the way. Warrior further added, Warrior also talked specifically about James Hetfield who did not perform the cover of “The Usurper” at all. Still, Warrior noted, “This is completely personal, and I know probably the majority of your readers will not share this feeling, but even if they had done a fantastic job, I could puke all over it because I don’t support people who go hunting bears for a hobby. I cannot respect a person like that, even if it’s a genius musician.”

It is now something of a tradition for Metallica to put together a slapdash cover of a hit song in the middle of each show. Metallica’s lead guitarist Hammett and bassist Trujillo put together a cover of a hit song by an artist local to whatever city they are playing that night. The cover set has been dubbed “Rob & Kirk’s Doodle,” usually feature Trujillo on lead vocals. They generally border somewhere between hilarious and unsightly. In a Prince tribute, they performed “When Doves Cry” and Trujillo was noted to be grumbling the words in this Prince tribute in Minneapolis.

Metallica are on tour now in Europe with Ghost and they just added South American dates with Greta Van Fleet. They performed earlier this year in a Chris Cornell tribute and recently made an announcement to their fans about tickets that were grabbed quickly and resold for higher prices.

Metallica tweeted that, the second ‘S&M’ 20th Anniversary Show in San Francisco is opened exclusively for Fifth Members with a few contractual obligations after the instant snatch by bots from tickets scalpers. The fact that fans were dissatisfied by the exorbitant resell price results the combat of the ticket scalpers – the announcement of a second “S&M2” concert. The concert is coming on Sunday, September 8 after the first show.

Photo Credit: Mauricio Alvarado