{"id":227,"date":"2026-08-14T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realrockrevival.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/14\/the-day-that-metallica-trolled-the-world\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T15:00:00","slug":"the-day-that-metallica-trolled-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/realrockrevival.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/14\/the-day-that-metallica-trolled-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The day that Metallica trolled the world"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When Metallica embarked upon their 23 month Wherever We May Roam tour in the summer of 1991, they produced a tour programme with a difference.<\/p>\n

Alongside the traditional glossy band photos, the San Francisco band chose to mock those who\u2019d sneered at their ascendancy by re-printing a series of caustic reviews in the programme\u2019s pages. Pity poor Paul Maldonado Jr of the El Paso Herald Host<\/em>, a journalist who reviewed one Metallica show mentioning a song the band had never played live at that point (The God That Failed<\/em>) and another song that doesn\u2019t actually exist in their catalogue (\u201cto their knowledge [Metallica] have never written a song called Carry On<\/em>\u201d, the programme read). So pleased were they by this wheeze, that the quartet pulled the trick again later in the decade, emblazoning the cover artwork of their Whiskey In The Jar<\/em> single with all the scathing reviews the cover version had garnered following it\u2019s inclusion on the Garage Inc<\/em>. album.<\/p>\n

When the band\u2019s official ‘Glastallica’ T-shirt was unveiled ahead of their scheduled appearance at Europe’s biggest festival on June 28, 2014, they revisited this tactic again, printing a collection of negative notices on the reverse of their Peace, Love & Metal shirt, including a line pulled from a column written by Metal Hammer<\/em>‘s Dom Lawson’s for The Guardian<\/em><\/a>: “<\/em>Metallica at Glastonbury. Whoopee-fucking-doo.”<\/p>\n

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\"Metallica<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

Metallica ‘Glastallica’ T-shirt <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When you\u2019re the biggest metal band in the world, it\u2019s pretty easy to laugh off the haters, but there\u2019s a certain chutzpah involved in gleefully appropriating that negativity, even if the methodology is tried and tested. That smart-ass move alone would have been enough to demonstrate that Metallica weren\u2019t about to kowtow to the chattering classes and media commentariat ahead of their much-discussed Glastonbury headline set, but there was more in store.<\/p>\n

Before Metallica took to the Pyramid Stage on June 28 to become the first metal band ever to headline the festival, they premiered a specially commissioned film, produced by the acclaimed British film maker Julian Temple \u2013 the man who made The Great Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll Swindle<\/em> for the Sex Pistols, a smart reference which will have gone over the heads of most of those who viewed it \u2013 juxtaposing archive footage of \u2018Tally Ho\u2019 English toffs on a fox hunt, with documentary footage of four murderous bears on a killing spree. <\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t yet seen the clip, we won\u2019t spoil the ending for you but its intention \u2013 to wind up those aggrieved over James Hetfield\u2019s former role in bear hunts<\/a> \u2013 was clear. <\/p>\n

Strike two to Metallica.<\/p>\n

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Metallica\u2019s final piece of passive-agressive piss-taking was more subtle. <\/p>\n

Ahead of a crushing version of Sad But True<\/em>, James Hetfield stepped up to the mic, to dedicate the song to to \u201call the British heavy metal bands that have been dreaming and still dream of playing this stage\u201d, a gently barbed comment clearly aimed at a certain British metal singer who\u2019s taken every opportunity to criticise the band\u2019s decision to play Glastonbury<\/a>. <\/p>\n

And then there was the gig itself. Let\u2019s be honest, the \u2018debate\u2019 over whether Metallica could or should play Glastonbury was ended by the time the \u2018Die! Die! Die!<\/em>\u2019 breakdown of Creeping Death<\/em> echoed across the Somerset countryside. Was it the best Metallica gig ever? Absolutely not. But for 100 minutes on a rainy night in England, the biggest metal band in the world proved exactly why no-one has toppled them from their perch in the 23 years since the ‘Black Album’ was released. <\/p>\n

For all the Twitter frenzy and clickbait media scaremongering, there\u2019s no doubt who woke up the morning after with the biggest smiles on their faces.<\/p>\n

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When Metallica embarked upon their 23 month Wherever We May Roam tour in the summer of 1991, they produced a tour programme with a difference. Alongside the traditional glossy band photos, the San Francisco band chose to mock those who\u2019d sneered at their ascendancy by re-printing a series of caustic reviews in the programme\u2019s pages. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/realrockrevival.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/realrockrevival.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/realrockrevival.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realrockrevival.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realrockrevival.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/realrockrevival.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realrockrevival.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/realrockrevival.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realrockrevival.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realrockrevival.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}