Metallica – Black Album Playback Riverside Studios, 12 August 2026

Metallica – Black Album Playback
Riverside Studios, 12 August 2026

Experienced by Robert Corich

Listening to Metallica’s Black Album in total darkness was, rather surprisingly, quite an experience. Strip away the visual distractions and you’re left with nothing but the music — and what a bloody great album it remains.

But what really jumped out through the surround sound system was just how much Metallica owe to Budgie. The influence of Burke Shelley’s thumping bass and Budgie’s utterly integral sound is impossible to miss. Those huge, rolling bass lines, chunky riffs and dark, grinding grooves are all over this record. Heard in complete darkness, with the sound coming at you from every direction, the similarities become even more apparent.

It’s a timely reminder of what a grossly underrated giant of the rock and metal world Burke Shelley and Budgie really were. Metallica may have taken those ingredients, put them through their own enormous amplifier and turned everything up to eleven, but the DNA is there — and in places, it’s remarkably obvious.

The pitch-black setting actually worked beautifully. Only an hour earlier I’d been standing on the side of the River Thames watching the eclipse, so quite how the two events managed to coincide on the same day I have no idea — but it worked rather nicely. After staring at the sky, having an hour of complete darkness to rest my increasingly burnt-out eyes was probably just what the doctor ordered!

And hearing the Black Album this way, without the usual stage spectacle, reminded me that beneath all the production, image and mythology, this is simply a bloody mighty collection of songs.

Darkness never sounded so good. Neither did Metallica for that matter.