Pitchfork: Portals, Kirk Hammett
“When someone does a side project, it takes away from the strength of Metallica,” frontman James Hetfield once told Playboy. But a lot has changed since the fractious days that birthed 2003’s St. Anger and Some Kind of Monster, one of the most revealing and intimate rock documentaries ever made about a band that seemingly hates each other. Back then, Metallica found itself at a crossroads, struggling with interband tension, sitting through therapy sessions, and even forbidding guitarist Kirk Hammett from playing any of his famously virtuosic solos on their new records. Nowadays, however, Metallica is in the comfortable role of elder statesmen, content to repeat past glories and indulge sprawling mixtape projects, like 2021’s The Metallica Blacklist, an overstuffed tribute to their 1991 breakthrough album that grouped disparate artists like Moses Sumney, Miley Cyrus, and Kamasi Washington.
