10 Heaviest Metallica Songs
3. One
There are a lot of elements that go into a Metallica track that make it heavy. From the subject matter to its wild instrumentation, each aspect of sound has to play some part in scaring the listener into submission. With "One," the band took all of the dark imagery of their previous work and focused it for their greatest epic.
The song begins with the sound of gunfire before giving way to a guitar passage that is the furthest thing from heavy. As the ballad behind the first half is on the soft side, the lyrics Hetfield intones leaves the listener in stunned awe. Inspired by literature, the song tells the perspective of a soldier who has lost his senses and can only feel pain, yet has to remain alive because he can't communicate with his doctors.
The real crowned jewel of the song is the outro, where the double bass foreshadows something ominous before the guitars come in with a machine gun-like energy. Behind the tendon-snapping riff, Kirk Hammett's solo perfectly encapsulates the dread of the song while being one of the greatest solos in metal history. Far from being just a ballad, "One" is one of the ultimate Metallica songs in terms of raw intensity and maniacal instrumentation.