Metallica: 10 Awesome Songs NO ONE Talks About
4. Don't Tread On Me - Metallica
What more is there really to say about the Black Album?
Being one of the only metal albums that has achieved Diamond status, this was the one record that brought Metallica to the big leagues, with songs like Enter Sandman and the Unforgiven being all over rock radio.
On the other hand, the amount of sales an album has doesn't mean that each of its tracks gets treated equally.
For as much as people gripe about Metallica turning into a rock band around this time, Don't Tread on Me is about as metal as it gets, with a riff that sounds like it could crush your skull in if it wanted to. Being a bit of a pastiche of the American attitude, the lyrics of this track are a lot grittier than you may expect, with Hetfield's booming voice not really saying whether this is the right or wrong attitude to have.
It gets even stranger when the main riff kicks in, with Lars having a swing feel to his drumming. Though this kind of rhythmic structure is reserved for big band jazz and some Broadway material, no other band have managed to capture this kind of rhythm with such gusto in years.
Culminating with one of the greatest Kirk solos on the entire album, Don't Tread on Me is the one Metallica song that assured fans that even though things were changing, they hadn't forgotten their metal origins just yet.