To celebrate the 30th anniversary of their incredibly influential and commercially successful record, The Black Album, Metallica have enlisted a whole host of indie cool kid musicians to do covers of the songs. Putting all these covers together for a full covers album, dubbed The Metallica Blacklist, the likes of Phoebe Bridgers, St. Vincent and Jason Isbell, and even Miley Cyrus have all gotten involved. Other artists like J. Balvin have also dropped covers, but a brand new offering from British pop star Rina Sawayama ups the ante today.
Plenty of artists offer their own take and their own sound when covering a classic band’s song, but not Rina. Instead, she offered a true to form take on the song that hews close to the energy and pure rock sound of Metallica’s own version. Of course, her lyrical delivery is still going to be pretty far off from the tone James Hetfield delivers, but it’s actually refreshing to hear an artist render a song so close to the original. Especially when it’s a song as classic as this one. Rina just keeps proving her versatility with every new project. Listen above.
The Metallica Blacklist is out 9/10 via Blackened Recordings. Pre-order it here.
