Why Doesn't Metallica Play More Underrated Songs Live?

Maybe Metallica should change up the setlist?

Having recently seen Metallica live on Aug. 24 in Vancouver, I got to wondering why some songs aren't as well received by fans as others during the show.

While most of the crowd was rocking to most of the songs, some tracks drew a kind of "meh" response from fans.

It wasn't a sellout concert, with the floor half full and several sections in the corners rather bare. That in itself was kind of surprising.

And a good number of fans there, at least in the general area I was sitting, just didn't seem really that into it. Maybe the potent weed that was being smoked everywhere had them hippy-shaking in their seats.

But if you look at the songs, you might glean an answer towards some of the apathy.

Metallica has been around for more than 33 years, touring quite a bit. With that comes the fact they tend to play the same songs live. Over and Over.

As a longtime fan of the band, I'm frankly tired of seeing them do "For Whom the Bell Tolls" for the umpteenth time. It's a great song to be sure, but fans seem tired of seeing it live.

And "Seek and Destroy" is another that they've played on pretty much every single tour.

Even the mastery of "Master of Puppets" is getting dull now. Overplayed. Beat to death.

Then, as usual, they closed the show with their most overplayed song "Enter Sandman". Again. Yawn.

I get that the band sort of has to appeal to the lowest common denominator and play songs the casual fan might recognize, but wouldn't it be better if they pulled out some older, underrated songs from the catalogue?

Suffice it to say Metallica would be well-served to play some other tracks. How about "Leper Messiah"? It's easy enough, so Lars Ulrich can get through it on drums.

What about "Outlaw Torn" – one of their most underrated songs. Or "Bleeding Me" – another standout from the Load album. Or how about "Fixxer", a song they finally played live late in 2021, which is an absolut gem.

But sadly for longtime fans of Metallica, it's pretty much the same old songs live, aside from anything they played off Hardwired ... to Self Destruct, and I loved hearing those songs live in concert for the first time.

And just like the Rolling Stones before them, playing "Satisfaction" for the millionth time, it's likely Metallica fans will have to endure through "Enter Sandman" over and over again.

Check out what Lars Ulrich thinks of Metallica playing their fastest songs when they're in their 60s.

Temple of the Dog: An Emotional Rock Powerhouse

There are few hard rock albums packed with as much raw emotion as the stellar Temple of the Dog record.

The 1991 masterpiece from the Seattle supergroup was conceived and written by Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell as a tribute to his good friend Andrew Wood, the lead singer of Mother Lovebone, who died on March 19, 1990 after overdosing on heroin. Interestingly, the name Temple of the Dog comes from the opening lyrics of the Mother Love Bone track “Man of Golden Words”: “I want to show you something, like joy inside my heart, seems I been living in the temple of the dog.”

Cornell and Co. made the record in just 15 days from November to December at Seattle’s London Bridge Studios.

It’s a one-off record that’s about as organic as you will ever hear in rock. Temple of the Dog consists of Cornell, Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready (guitar), Jeff Ament (bass) and Stone Gossard (guitar), as well as Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron. Additionally, Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder sang on the hit song “Hunger Strike”.

For Ament and Gossard, who were in Mother Lovebone with Wood, making the album was something of a cathartic process, as it no doubt was for Cornell as well. He and Wood were roommates at one time.

Amazing Collaboration Led to Unique Vibe

On the collaboration, Ament noted it was “a really good thing at the time” for Gossard and himself. Gossard recalls the recording process as a “non-pressure filled” situation with no pressure from the record company. The guitarist later stated it was “the easiest and most beautiful record we’ve ever been involved with.”

Cornell was the principal songwriter, writing all the lyrics, and most of the music. Two tracks in particular “Say Hello 2 Heaven” and “Reach Down” were written directly in response to Wood’s untimely death. In the chorus of “Say Hello 2 Heaven”, you can just hear the raw emotion in Cornell’s voice, which should give most listener goosebumps, especially near the end of the song.

The late Cornell recorded those two songs, which he described as the first time he’d written anything specifically for a person, as demos and played them for Ament, who suggest the Soundgarden frontman should record them.

Cornell told Rolling Stone he thought Soundgarden could record the two songs on an album as a tribute to Wood. As it turns out, Cornell asked Ament if he’d like to help record the songs. From there they decided to make an entire album, forming Temple of the Dog in the process.

The members of band recall the impact Cameron had on the record. “Once we started playing with Chris and Matt, the songs took on a different life, especially from Matt’s end. His playing becomes the hook on a lot of the songs. The part that he came up with on “Wooden Jesus” is such an iconic drum song to me. It’s such a riff and so musical. His playing dictated that we leave space in those songs. To my ears, that’s what makes the record really unique and fun to listen to,” Ament said in Rolling Stone.

Another standout, emotional track is “Times of Trouble” which details the trappings of heroin and how a user can hold on and overcome the addiction, even when it seems there is no hope left. Sadly, Wood’s addiction got the best of him just as Mother Lovebone was about to serve notice as a premier Seattle rock and roll band.

After laying down nine songs, Cornell wanted to make it an even 10 tracks to fill the Temple album. That’s when the band decided to lay down “Hunger Strike”, which Cornell had written a few months prior to the Temple sessions. It wasn’t finished but he recalls how Vedder, who had just joined Pearl Jam at the time, came to add vocals: “I thought that “Hunger Strike” would be a good message to end the album on, but it wasn’t complete. It was just one verse. I was singing the chorus in the rehearsal space and Eddie just kind of shyly walked up to the mic and started singing the low “going hungry” and I started singing the high one. When I heard him sing, the whole thing came together in my brain. I just felt like, ‘Wow, his voice is so great in this low register. He should sing on it. I’ll sing the first verse and then he’ll come in. Even though it’s the same lyrics, it’s a different singer and it’ll feel like two verses’,” recalled Cornell in a Rolling Stone interview.

For Temple of the Dog fans, there are rumors out there that a live album might soon be released with songs taken from the band’s 2016 tour.

With Cornell’s death in 2017, there will never be another Temple of the Dog tour or album. Fortunately, music fans can still reach out and listen to the 1990 masterpiece, which will stand the test of time.

Check out the making of Soundgarden's Louder Than Love album

Piece of Mind: Iron Maiden's Metal Masterpiece

With the success of 1982's Number of the Beast, one would think Iron Maiden would be hard pressed to follow it with an equal or better record, but they did just that with Piece of Mind.

Despite bringing in a new drummer in yet another personnel change, 1983's Piece of Mind turned out to be an amazing album and it defined Maiden's modern, mid-late 1980s sound.

The album was quickly recorded at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas from January to March, 1983, and is the first to feature drummer Nicko McBrain after former skin-basher Clive Burr was ousted from Maiden in December, 1982.

Coming off the phenomenal Beast album and tour, the band was getting comfortable with each other as singer Bruce Dickinson had time to get fully adjusted to the workings of Iron Maiden. Dickinson had more influence on the songwriting, composing "Revelations", while co-writing on "Flight of Icarus", "Die with your Boots On", and "Sun and Steel".

"I think on this album, because Bruce has been in a band awhile and was also very involved with the writing, he's more relaxed," said bassist Steve Harris in a 1983 interview with Kevin Thompson for Artist Magazine. "So the vocal performance is tremendous. He's so quick in the studio because his ear for pitch is so good - he just gets up there and bang, it retains a great live feel."

Most of the songs were written at Hotel le Chalet in New Jersey during the hotel’s off-season, then recorded down in Nassau.

Certainly, Piece of Mind sets the mark for the "new Maiden" in terms of personnel and how the band sounds on record. It's the first record of the great bunch that includes Powerslave, Somewhere in Time and Seventh Son of Seventh Son to have that clean, crisp, modern, Maiden metal sound.

"I think it's now becoming what Iron Maiden is all about, and we expect it's going to develop from there," said Harris at the time.

Sound of the Mind

The distinct sound of Piece of Mind is in no small part thanks to producer Martin "Black Night" Birch, who began working with the band on the Killers record. While Number of the Beast had a very doomy, dark feel to it (like it was recorded in a catacomb), Piece of Mind was very crisp and open.

"Martin has always added his expertise in the studio and his great ability at recording our sounds," noted Harris. "We've only just come to this point in our drum and guitar sounds, which are exceptional now - it's just a team growing up together."

The album came together very quickly, with Harris noting "Where Eagles Dare" was recorded in two takes.

"Revelations" was a Dickinson song that Harris feels comes off much better live than on the album. Same with "Flight of Icarus", which was the first single off the record (it hit No.12 on the Billboard Rock Chart). Harris prefers it better live because it's faster, and if he had his druthers, the band would have put more pace into it on the record, but Dickinson argued for a slower, more plodding beat.

Backwards Message on Piece of Mind

The backwards recording before "Still Life" was Maiden getting back at all the religious freaks who came down on the because of Number of the Beast. The recording is actually a drunken McBrain doing an impersonation of Idi Amin (leader of Uganda in the 1970s), so the accent is very thick. Played forwards its says: "What ho, said da t'ing wid da t'ree bonce. Don't meddle wit t'ings you don't understand."

McBrain said the band had enough of being labelled as Satanic: "We were sick and tired of being labelled as Devil worshippers and all this bollocks by these fucking morons in the States, so we thought, 'Right, you want to take the piss? We'll show you how to take the bleeding piss, my son!' And one of the boys taped me in the middle of this Idi Amin routine I used to do when I'd had a few drinks. I remember it distinctly ended with the words, 'Don't meddle wid t'ings yo don't understand.' We thought, if people were going to be stupid about this sort of thing, we might as well give them something to be really stupid about, you know?"

Another cool song on the album and very underrated, is "To Tame A Land", which was based on the "Dune" novels by Frank Herbert. Interestingly, back in 1983, Harris said it's the best song he's ever written up to that point.

With Piece of Mind, Iron Maiden really came into their own and began a string of phenomenal records that carried on until 1990, when Adrian Smith left the band while in pre-production for "No Prayer for the Dying".

Check out the five best Maiden songs with Paul Di'Anno