A Bluegrass Version of Metallica’s Heavy Metal Hit, “Enter Sandman”

On the strength of its hit sin­gle Enter Sand­man, Metal­li­ca’s epony­mous 1991 album even­tu­al­ly went plat­inum, and the band became one of the biggest heavy met­al acts around. Since then, the influ­ence of “Enter Sand­man” has rip­pled out into the larg­er cul­ture. Since 1999, Mar­i­ano Rivera, sure­ly the great­est relief pitch­er in the his­to­ry of base­ball, has rit­u­al­ly made his entrance to the game with “Enter Sand­man” pro­vid­ing the sound­track. (Per­haps a strange pick for a mild-man­nered, deeply reli­gious man. But some­how it works.) And the song has been cov­ered umpteen times — by oth­er met­al bands (most notably Motör­head) but also by Weird Al Yankovic, Pat Boone, and the blue­grass band called Iron Horse.

Formed over a decade ago in the record­ing cap­i­tal of Mus­cle Shoals, Alaba­ma, Iron Horse fea­tures Tony Robert­son on man­dolin, Vance Hen­ry on gui­tar, Ricky Rogers on bass, and Antho­ny Richard­son on ban­jo. And, togeth­er, they’ve tak­en some risks along the way.

In 2003, they released Fade to Blue­grass: Trib­ute to Metal­li­ca, a col­lec­tion of ten Metal­li­ca songs done in blue­grass fash­ion — “or at least as blue­grass as it’s pos­si­ble for Metal­li­ca songs to be.” Speak­ing about the album on their web­site, they write:

Metallica’s thun­der­ing drums, heart-pound­ing gui­tars and anguished vocals tell the sto­ry of peo­ple lost in the hus­tle of mod­ern soci­ety. Blue­grass music sings the tale of peo­ple stuck between heav­en and hell, the farm and the city and love and hate. In many ways Metal­li­ca and blue­grass are broth­ers, one raised in the urban jun­gle and the oth­er in the coun­try. So what hap­pens when these two estranged sib­lings get togeth­er? Fade to Blue­grass: Trib­ute to Metal­li­ca has the answer. Ban­jo and man­dolin replace elec­tric gui­tars and high lone­some har­monies soar in place of growl­ing vocals to cre­ate a sur­pris­ing and mov­ing trib­ute. Per­formed with pas­sion and skill by Alaba­ma blue­grass band Iron Horse, and fea­tur­ing clas­sics such as “Unfor­giv­en,” “Enter Sand­man” and “Fade to Black,” Fade to Blue­grass: Trib­ute to Metal­li­ca is a fam­i­ly reunion between broth­ers heavy met­al and blue­grass.

You can watch Iron Horse per­form “Enter Sand­man” above. And below you can see that Metal­li­ca’s lead gui­tarist Kirk Ham­mett approves:

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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