“I was trying to write something heavier than the bands I was listening to, and that felt like the first time that I’d done it”: How Metallica broke the thrash metal mould with biblical barnstormer Creeping Death

Metallica in 1985.

The inspiration for Metallica’s first truly world-beating anthem came from an unlikely source. Cecil B. DeMille was the director of some of the most opulent Hollywood movies of the 40s and 50s. For his final film, 1956’s biblical epic The Ten Commandments, DeMille enlisted chisel-jawed superstar Charlton Heston to play Moses as he led the enslaved Hebrew people out of Egypt to the Promised Land as a series of plagues were visited on their oppressors.

In one Danish household, this Old Testament extravaganza became essential viewing whenever it was repeated on TV years later.