Metallica are Making Music Videos for Every Song on Hardwired… to Self-Destruct

We’ve come a long way from the Cliff Burton-era Metallica that shunned the very concept of music videos: Lars Ulrich has revealed to The Straits Times that since “YouTube is the world’s biggest television station, we figured we may as well knock a video out for every song” on the band’s new album, Hardwired… to Self-Destruct. The Straits Times notes that “Mega pop stars such as Justin Bieber and Beyoncé have done the same, releasing full-length music videos for all the tracks on their 2015 releases Purpose and Lemonade.”

Here’s the thing, though: I haven’t seen any of the Purpose videos, but the ones for Lemonade are all visually striking and highly impressive. Furthermore, those videos all tell one big narrative. In other words, Beyoncé and her collaborators took full advantage of the music video medium to do something interesting that was sure to intrigue fans.

Meanwhile, the first three videos to be released from Hardwired are… well… see for yourself, if you haven’t already:

Wow. So exciting. I can’t wait to see nine more of those.

Really, if these are all just going to be performance videos, it would have been cooler for the band to just do what they did with St. Anger and release a video of them playing the album in its entirety. At least then fans would feel like they were getting something special, separate from the album (and it wouldn’t hurt to try and disprove everyone’s assumption that Lars’ drums have been edited to within an inch of their life). Only the hardest of the hardcore Metallica fans will wanna watch so many variations on what amount to the dreaded “warehouse video.”

Are you stoked to see Metallica make so many videos for the album regardless of the quality of those videos, or do you think this is a colossal waste of effort and money? Weigh in with your thoughts below. Hardwired… to Self-Destruct comes out November 18.

[via The PRP]