It’s Metallica’s most famous song, and one of metal’s greatest anthems. And as the band’s drummer and co-founding member Lars Ulrich recalls, what he experienced in the creation of Enter Sandman was something akin to divine inspiration. “The planets were aligning,” he says. “It’s like you’re guided by some sort of cosmic energy, it steers you.”
In 1991, Enter Sandman was, in every respect, a game changer for Metallica. For the band that had defined thrash metal in the 80s, this track had a different kind of heaviness, a measured power and epic feel comparable to AC/DC’s Hells Bells. And with this artistic breakthrough came commercial success on a massive scale.
