See Metallica’s Reality-Bending, War-Torn ‘Confusion’ Video
In Metallica‘s magnetic “Confusion” video, one soldier’s civilian life blurs into a battlefield – and vice versa. “Coming home from war, pieces don’t fit anymore,” James Hetfield bellows over a thunderous, palm-muted riff and Kirk Hammett’s wah-wah shrapnel; meanwhile, director Claire Marie Vogel cuts back and forth between a woman fighting in a war zone and working in a mundane office.
The clip opens with the armed soldier kicking down the door of an abandoned building, only to find a telephone on the ground. After picking it up, she transports back to her workplace, where ordinary items, including a toy helicopter, a cup of coffee and a stack of copier paper, trigger images of her military service. “Delusion/ all sanity is but a memory,” Hetfield sings, mourning, “My life: the war that never ends.”
“Confusion” highlights Metallica‘s upcoming 10th LP, Hardwired… to Self-Destruct, out November 18th. The band will mark the release with a “Blackened Friday” event – a twist on Record Store Day’s Black Friday – at hundreds of independent record stores across the U.S. Fans participating in the midnight sale will be eligible to win items like limited edition vinyl slip mats and posters; the grand prize winner will receive the new album in a variety of formats, including the deluxe box set and a test pressing of the record.
In August, drummer Lars Ulrich spoke to Rolling Stone about Hardwired, detailing the album’s “simpler” songs. “We introduce a mood and we stick to it, rather than songs we’ve done where one riff happens and we go over here and then over there and it becomes a journey through all these different soundscapes,” he said. “The songs are more linear. And by ‘less frenetic,’ I mean there are certainly less starts and stops in the songs. It cruises along a little bit more than the last record.”
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