The Blacklist with Cage The Elephant and Rodrigo y Gabriela
Celebrating 30 years of The Black Album, more than 50 artists have contributed to the biggest tribute album ever recorded – Themetallicablacklist. TG speaks to Cage The Elephant guitarist Nick Bockrath and Gabriela Quintero of Rodrigo y Gabriela about the
Few records in history have crossed over like The Black Album. Not only was this the defining metal album of the early 90s - it also had the melody, hooks, and polish to influence artists across the genre spectrum. And to mark its 30th anniversary, there is the The Metallica Blacklist – on which more than 50 artists from all over the musical map have contributed cover versions of this iconic album’s 12 tracks.
Unexpected participants include Miley Cyrus (aided by friends including Elton John) taking on Nothing Else Matters, and Pharrell Williams’ outfit the Neptunes, who tackle Wherever I May Roam. It’s not limited to the Anglosphere either: Metallica’s global reach is underlined by artists from France, Mexico, Mongolia, South Korea and India.
For guitarists, the Blacklist is a chance to hear some of the world’s greatest talents stretch their imaginations on the best metal songs of the 90s. Jason Isbell, Rodrigo y Gabriela and Chris Stapleton show wholly new possibilities for these songs. Disappointingly, two of the best current guitarists featured, Phoebe Bridgers and Sam Fender, betrayed the cause by leaving their guitars at home. Happily, homegrown talent IDLES and Biffy Clyro brought all their guitars. And pedals.
A notable contribution comes from Cage the Elephant, whose look at The Unforgiven sounds like it could be a Cage original until a note-for-note recreation of Kirk Hammett’s solo pops up. With a laid back groove, Cage the Elephant trade powerchords for acoustic guitars, and whispery vocals harmonised an octave apart. Guitarist Nick Bockrath told us how they did it...
The rationale for choosing The Unforgiven was simple: “That song just spoke to us all the most,” Nick says. “We felt like we could pull it off. We had looked at Don’t Tread On Me, but really The Unforgiven was the obvious one.”
Although the decision was easy, Nick’s energy for the song was a driving factor in choosing The Unforgiven. “That song – it’s almost like their Stairway To Heaven. They were this ripping thrash band, and they come out with this mellow acoustic song. It’s a simple thing, but I think it opened the sound up a lot. It opens up a lot of possibilities. If you go and see Metallica [live], they’re going to do a bunch of rippers and then there’s this moment where the energy’s brought down with this acoustic guitar. That’s a whole new sound.”
Whenever you record a cover, there is a dilemma between showing respect for the original without simply repeating what’s already been done. Nick was well aware of those competing pressures. “It’s such a classic that we wanted to make it our own, but I was reverent, especially to Kirk’s parts. It’s so iconic that I wanted to make sure that all the melodies were exactly like the song, but kind of filter it in our own way.” Nick felt he couldn’t just replicate Kirk’s approach to the intro, though. He pauses to sing the main theme. “His version? It’s perfect. He killed that.”
To this end, Nick crafted his own arrangement of the intro, incorporating the memorable opening guitar melody into a fingerstyle acoustic arrangement. The verses have a laid back, primarily acoustic sound, unlike the original crunching power chords. “Well, you’re not going to out-rock Metallica,” explains Nick. “I find that sometimes with intensity it doesn’t have to be all distorted. It’s kind of fun in our recording that when the solo does come, it just rips up because that level of dynamic hasn’t been on yet.”
That solo, however, retains the song’s rootsy vibe. A lot of that is thanks to the band’s distinctively organic groove (“that right there makes it feel like a Cage song”, Nick notes). It’s also thanks to his raw guitar tone, delivered via a ’71 Gibson SG Custom into a stereo mix of a 50s Fender Harvard and 70s Fender Champ amps. Then Nick has a trick of his own to produce clarity: “If you listen again you can hear an acoustic guitar doubled with the fuzzy electric. You still get the articulation of the pick from the dry acoustic. I thought that would be a cool sound.”
Part of making a song your own is to recognise your strengths, and Nick had a signature sound he wanted to use from the start. “I felt pretty strongly I was gonna play pedal steel. That’s kind of a Cage signature. We have a lot of slide guitar leads.” The pedal steel was recorded with the same amps as the SG. It doubles the lead melodies in the chorus along with a vintage Gibson J-45 acoustic Nick borrowed from the studio. Surprisingly for such a well realised version, the band didn’t experiment with different arrangements. “We just sort of built it and ran with it,” Nick sums up. Making the song their own was partly intentional, but it’s also a by-product of having a diverse group of musicians who are used to playing together. “Everyone brought their own contribution. You can be reverent to the song and play the parts, but if you have six guys doing their thing eventually it’s gonna sound like us.”
Nick’s passion for Metallica is obvious as he talks about the process of recreating Kirk’s parts. “It was sort of like my love letter to Kirk. I was like, ‘I’m gonna learn this solo exactly’. For a couple of days before recorded, I really dug in on it. One of the great things about Kirk’s playing is he’s a ripper but he’s also an excellent composer. A lot of his solos are melodies. This solo is really integral to the song, so I learned it all.”
The Metallica influence is not always obvious in Cage the Elephant’s songs, but it’s not for lack of passion from the band. “When I was learning to play they were one of the first bands that really spoke to me,” Nick enthuses. “I first heard Master Of Puppets in a skate video, and I was like, ‘Whoa, this song is incredible!’ A lot of music that I loved actually came from watching skateboard videos. I loved the guitar harmonies. Even when I was young I loved bands that went off onto instrumental sections. I remember that being really mysterious and amazing to me, like, how do they remember all that? How do they come up with it? That really spoke to me. And then Enter Sandman, these are the classic riffs. When you learn to play them, you play it over and over and over whenever you get together with your buddies. I was a fan when we were starting out. We all were. Matthan [Minster, guitar/keys] used to have a legit Metallica cover band. That’s in all of us. We’ve been lucky to open for them and hang with them. Seeing that live, it’s just absolutely powerful.”
That fandom meant there was no shortage of pressure when recording for the Blacklist. “I was really like, ‘Kirk’s gonna hear this!’ I wanted him to think it was awesome. It’s a very surreal thing to be recording a song from a band that inspired me to play, and they’re definitely gonna hear it.”
Listening to the Blacklist rams home the breadth of influence The Black Album has had. Once you’ve heard Chris Stapleton’s Nothing Else Matters, it makes total sense as a country song. The Neptunes’ look at Wherever I May Roam suddenly makes sense of all those Phrygian pop tunes Pharrell has produced, and after you hear Australian punks The Chats tear through Holier Than Thou you’ll notice it was always a punk song. The Black Album’s genius was in being all things to all people without sounding like a weak compromise. Nick argues that the acoustic guitar on The Unforgiven is an essential part of it speaking to people.
“There’s something about acoustic guitar that brings it all back. It’s just recognisable to everyone. Electric is more stylised, you listen to it and hear a region or an era, especially with distortion. Acoustic is just very raw and in that way can communicate to anyone. Everywhere in the world, a lot of people have like an acoustic guitar lying around. I imagine a lot of people heard that song and went, ‘Damn, I wanna know how to play that.’”
“YOU’RE NOT GOING TO OUT
ROCK METALLICA!”
NICK BOCKRATH