Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett released a video on Tuesday, Oct. 27. In it, he reads part of Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 poem “The Raven.” The band posted the clip on its official YouTube channel ahead of Halloween, and Brett Murray filmed and edited it.
Hammett reads the last seven stanzas of the poem. He wears a black jacket with a raven and a grim reaper on it. He sits on a couch, and a charred skeleton looms behind him. Images of ravens drift across the screen as he reads.
“Inamorata,” the closing song on the 2023 album 72 Seasons, plays in the background. The video description says, “Just in time for Halloween, Kirk Hammett lends his voice to one of the most haunting poems ever written: Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven.’ A lifelong devotee of horror, Kirk has spent decades collecting the art, posters, and artifacts of the genre’s golden age. Here he turns to the source, reading Poe’s 1845 masterpiece about a grieving man, a midnight visitor, and a single word that won’t stop knocking. Pour something dark, turn the lights down, and listen.”
Hammett has gathered horror memorabilia for decades. He started when he was about 5 or 6, according to Metalhead Zone. In 2012 he published a coffee table book called Too Much Horror Business, and he showed part of his collection in the “Kirk’s Crypt” exhibit at the 2012 and 2013 Orion Music + More festivals.
His collection holds pieces from the lab used in the 1931 film Frankenstein and Boris Karloff’s costume from the 1934F film The Black Cat. It also has the axe Jack Nicholson carried in The Shining. Then there’s the cape Bela Lugosi wore in the 1948 film Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The Peabody Essex Museum built the exhibition It’s Alive! Classic Horror and Sci-Fi Art From the Kirk Hammett Collection, which showed more than 100 pieces of graphic art.
Hammett has also organized the Fear FestEvil horror convention, according to Rolling Stone. In 2022, he released the instrumental solo project Portals, which drew its inspiration from horror movies.
He has spoken before about why horror pulls him in. “Heavy metal and horror movies come from the same sources, they come from the same seeds, they have a lot of the same imagery and subject matter and whatnot,” he told Way Too Indie back in 2014.
Metallica is in the middle of its Life Burns Faster residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas. The band played there on Thursday, Oct. 29, and will be back on Saturday, Oct. 31. More Sphere shows follow on Nov. 5 and Nov. 7.
After that, Metallica heads to the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, for shows on Nov. 19 and Nov. 21. Tickets are available at Metallica.com.
