10 Rock Bands That Ripped Off Their Own Songs

For an album that has gone down as one of the most commercially successful metal records of all time, metalheads have still been torn about what to think of Metallica’s Black Album. While the band ended up leaving some of the more epic sides of their thrash roots behind for something more radio friendly, songs like Enter Sandman and Sad But True were the perfect medium of heavy and hooky, turning the entire genre into a household name at the start of the ’90s. If the first one worked so well though, why not do the entire thing all over again?

While fans like to dog on Load for being the moment where the band went down the alternative road and never got back on track, the opening single King Nothing actually has a lot more in common with the Black Album than you actually realize. If you listen to the way the riff is written and the song is constructed, the whole thing is just Enter Sandman done again, complete with the ominous opening before jumping into the verses and then ending the chorus on a certain line when all the rest of the instruments drop out.

You can call it subconscious borrowing or Metallica just accidentally going back to old tricks, but James Hetfield certainly knew what he was doing here, even ending the song by singing “off to never never land,” calling back directly to the key line in Sandman. Load might have a few too many songs that sound like a grunge-ified version of Metallica, but listening to this song makes the whole album feel like you’re listening to The Black Album Part 2.