Just because you’re a big time metalhead doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to love Metallica. Even hardcore fans can admit that not everything that the thrash icons have done has been amazing, and there are more than a few times where they’ve released a record that has divided their fanbase.
They’ve more than earned their place in music history, but for some reason the band doesn’t sit well with one of the current leaders of pop rock.
When promoting their most recent album Being Funny in a Foreign Language, Matt Healy from the 1975 had some pretty harsh things to say about Metallica, calling them one of the worst things he’s ever heard.
As the interview shifts to talking about nostalgia, Healy starts to mention bands and artists that are getting a lot more exposure after the fact, bringing up Stranger Things and the way they have boosted Kate Bush’s career with “Running Up That Hill.”
After the interviewer brings up Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” being used in the season finale of the show, Matt takes some time to rant saying “fuck yeah I’m a Kate Bush fan {but} I fucking hate Metallica. My worst band of all time.”
While it’s easy to listen to some of the 1975’s material and see how they aren’t necessarily bowing at the alter of all things Hetfield, Matt at least has some respect for the more aggressive side of rock, making songs like “People” that seem to have an industrial edge behind it rather than the bright and glittery pop music that they were known for.
In fact, his staunch anti-Metallica stance is that much more confusing given that Healy himself is a self-proclaimed metalhead who likes Slayer:
“Yeah, I’ve always been a big metal fan. I was never into Metallica, I liked Slayer and bands like that. Stuff that I was into was bands like Converge, Glassjaw, the more post-hardcore kind of stuff.
I was super into Poison the Well and, I mean, Refused are probably my favourite heavy metal band of all time, that was a big deal for me. It was in the Despair collection, the AFI fan club, and all that kind of stuff.”
Matt can say everything he wants though, but that doesn’t dock the numbers of Metallica’s army, from the massive sales of The Black Album to the classics that still play on the radio, with the audience only growing after their appearance in the most metal performance to ever rock Hawkins in Stranger Things.
This band is about as metal as they come, but Matty just seems like the punk trying to stir up something with the big guns.