Metallica Remind a TikTok User They Still Hate “Escape”

This may come as a surprise to you, but Metallica‘s written some pretty big stinkers in their time. But while most people think of those stinkers as post-Black Album occurrences, there’s one song from Ride the Lightning that draws ire not just from most fans, but from the band itself — “Escape.”

Regularly seen as a filler song, “Escape” is absolutely despised by James Hetfield in particular, who said as much in an interview with Sopitas.

“[‘Ride the Lightning’ album] was the first time we wrote a song in the studio. I remember we had all the songs and Lars said, ‘They want us to record one more, they need one more for the album.’ I was like, ‘You didn’t tell me that…’ So we had to write and it was really last-minute. So ‘Escape’ was one of those songs that was written in the studio.”

One TikTok user, @shotokanguitarist, posted a video wondering if the mostly maligned song from Ride the Lightning was any good. Rather than let the people decide, the official Metallica TikTok page answered the question with a simple, “It’s not.”

Weirdly enough, a lot of the comments on that TikTok have fans saying things like “it’s always been good” and “love the song,” which I have to say, is weird as hell. Metallica seems to agree with my take on this, as a second video posted by @shotokanguitarist wondered when people like those commenters actually liked the song, to which Metallica once again replied, stating “It’s like we’re in the Twilight Zone…”

So there you have it. Metallica still hate the song they’ve only played one or two times live, and they think it’s weird that some of you like it too.