James Hetfield repeated Ed Sheeran’s mistake and told his Las Vegas residency audience that he's sure to keep politics off the stage and that he thinks other artists who talk about the views at concerts are just spewing bullshit. Previously he had told Howard Stern that Metallica take no position on the subject of war. That's a strange attitude from a guy who wrote some of the best anti-war anthems of all time. It was also revealed after these comments that he supports his music being used to torture prisoners at Abu Ghraib and he supports the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine that has created hundreds of thousands of ‘disposable heroes.’
Of course he thanks the audience for all the money they spent because due to all reports they are charging jacked up prices for tickets and merch, like $5500 for the VIP ticket, $325 bucks for a sweater and who knows how much for those deluxe boxed sets.
I’ve heard these bullies say artists - people like Jack Osbourne and Gene Simmons - shouldn’t talk about politics before. What they really mean is they don’t want people to talk leftist politics or about Israel. Gene Simmons is so right-wing he still thinks the Vietnam war was the right thing to do.
It gives me no pleasure to do a video with this kind of angle as I have been a Metallica fan since I was a kid. And it is funny the timing of this as I was already in the process of making a video about anti-war songs and I was just about to get to the part about Metallica when I saw this in the news. So instead I used what I had already been forming in my mind to make a negative reaction video and it has done quite well — the YouTube algorithm really liked me this time.
Monday morning of last week the internet decided that it hates Shane Gillis for a joke he made on SNL and Metallica for what they said on stage. The kind of video the algorithm rewards are angry response videos to trending topics. I didn’t do a Gillis video as I am concentrating on music/Gaza videos at the moment and my take on Gillis is middling - I don’t hate him and I’m not going to stan for him either. So I could be rewarded for making more videos like this but I’m still going to just concentrate on where my interests take me.
‘Nuff Said!
