Weezer’s ‘Enter Sandman’ Cover Surprisingly Faithful to Metallica Original
Weezer keep it simple on their cover of Metallica's "Enter Sandman," forgoing any wild turns and staying fairly faithful to the classic metal song. The Rivers Cuomo-led alt-rockers' take on the 1991 Black Album cut is from the upcoming The Metallica Blacklist.
That's the fully-loaded Metallica tribute collection, comprised of covers of Black Album tracks by a bevy of different musicians, that arrives alongside a remastered and expanded edition of Metallica's landmark The Black Album on Sept. 10. Acts as disparate as Volbeat, Miley Cyrus, St. Vincent and Juanes have already shared their Metallica covers from the set; Ghost also contributes a version of "Enter Sandman" to the collection.
Listen to Weezer's "Enter Sandman" Metallica cover down toward the bottom of this post.
You can't take the nerd-rock out of the nerd, though. While Cuomo's formative years as a metalhead — not to mention Weezer's metal-leaning bent on Van Weezer and elsewhere — clearly inform the band's "Enter Sandman" version, the Weezer bandleader can't belie his practiced vocal coo, a far cry from James Hetfield's more aggressive timbre. On top of that, Weezer toss in a stylistic callback to their 1994 hit "Buddy Holly" at the tail end of the tune, further putting their stamp on it.
As for their own recordings, Metallica recently previewed rare live and studio renditions of "Through the Never," "Don't Tread on Me," "Wherever I May Roam," "The Unforgiven," "Sad But True" and more as excerpts from the expanded Black Album itself.
Pre-order The Metallica Blacklist here, the Black Album reissue here. A black-and-white Metallica photo book arrives in October. Jigsaw puzzles for Metallica's three latest albums also come out this fall.
NEW MUSIC PLAYLIST: Keep up with each week's new songs by following Loudwire's "Weekly Wire" Spotify playlist, featuring 50 tracks with updates each Friday.