3 underrated Metallica songs James Hetfield said are favorites

Formed more than four decades ago in Los Angeles by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, Metallica has released 11 studio albums so far, filled with hits that became important parts of the history of Heavy and Thrash Metal. Alongside Kirk Hammett, Rob Trujillo, Jason Newsted, and the late Cliff Burton, the founding members created incredible songs that have influenced countless musicians all over the world.

Although they are one of the most successful Metal bands of all time, many of their songs did not receive the recognition they deserved. James Hetfield once mentioned three underrated tracks as favorites.

3 underrated Metallica songs James Hetfield said are favorites

“The Thing that Should Not Be”

The first song is “The Thing that Should Not Be” from “Master of Puppets” (1986), which was inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft, one of the most influential horror and sci-fi writers of all time. The track has many references to the story “The Shadow over Innsmouth” and Cthulhu himself. It is considered to be by many fans the heaviest track on the album with a riff that to many of them emulates “a beast dragging itself into the sea”. “I have many different favorites for different moods. ‘The Thing that Should Not Be’ (Is one of them)”, Hetfield said in an interview with Jammin in 1999.

That’s not the only Metallica track inspired by Lovecraft’s work, the most obvious one is “The Call of Ktulu”, from their 1984 album “Ride the Lightning”. “(The original name of the song was) ‘When Hell Freezes Over’. Cthulhu was a part of the Lovecraft mythos, which Cliff was really into. It’s kind of all from this tweaked out guy from way back in the 30s and 40s. He had this old mythos about creatures sleeping in the earth, waiting to arise and take you away,” he told Double J.

Although Cliff Burton was the one who brought Lovecraftian inspiration to Metallica’s lyrics, in 2008 Hetfield tried to replicate that in”All Nightmare Long”, released on their album “Death Magnetic.” When answering fans’ questions around the time the record was released, he explained the inspiration behind the track. “I like to keep it as vague as possible, so it can plug into your life. It almost didn’t make it.”

He continued:

“The chorus is a leftover from ‘St. Anger’. It was an attempt to get back to the H.P. Lovecraft mythos with ‘The Thing that Should not Be’, ‘The Call of Ktulu’. This was about the hounds of Tindalos, which was another crazy mind f*ck (story). (It’s) about these wolves that hunt through their nightmares. The only way you can get away from them is stay with angels. You can’t even escape through sleep,” he told Sun Media.

James is also a big fan of Lovecraft’s stories and has even posted a photo on Metallica’s social media standing beside a plaque that pays tribute to the author on the campus of Brown University in Providence, where he lived. In “Hardwired… To Selft-Destruct” (2016), Metallica once again released a Lovecraft inspired song: “Dream No More”. When asked why by Vancouver Sun, James said: “Godzilla’s been done. You could write a song about King Kong, I guess. There’s a mystery still to it — it’s still alive and well, and interesting. I’m able to get dark, evil and giant whenever I take on the Cthulhu role.”

“Fixxxer”

James Hetfield has said that “Fixxxer,” the final track on the “Reload” album, released in 1997, is one of the songs he is most proud of. Although it is a song he highly regards, the band has only played it live once. It was part of the setlist only at their December 17, 2021 show in San Francisco, when they were celebrating their 40th anniversary. “After 40 years, there’s still firsts,” the frontman said. He already described the track as one which is more epic and “kind of like instrumental with real lyrics”.

“I think there’s a lot of old school Metallica in this (Reload album). (…) Longer, big fat Sabbathy type riffs like on ‘Fixxxer’ and things like that, are quite Metallica,” he said in an interview with Channel V in 1997 when promoting the record. That song was overshadowed by other fan favorites on the album. Some of them are “Fuel,” “The Memory Remains,” “The Unforgiven II” and “Better Than You.”

“Carpe Diem Baby”

The third song is “Carpe Diem Baby,” which was also part of “Reload” (1997). Curiously, the song title is the same as a tattoo James Hetfield got after a near-fatal accident at a Metallica concert in 1992 in Montreal. He practically caught fire after being hit by one of the pyrotechnic effects used on the tour. The phrase, in Latin, means “Seize the day, live your life like it’s your last, because you only have one.” The phrase was tattooed on his burned left arm, which depicted flames and cards.

The song was also not played very often live by the band during their career, but at least it was performed more frequently than “Fixxxer.” The song was played four times: at The Fillmore in San Francisco in 2011 (during their 30th anniversary shows), at their Orion Music + More festival in 2013, at the Roskilde Festival in 2013 and most recently at the Summer Sonic festival in Tokyo.

Out of these three songs, “The Thing That Should Not Be” is the most famous one. It was played by the band 267 times until 2025, being first performed in 1986 when the album was released. The most recent performance was in 2019 in Cologne, Germany.