Thrash Talk! The Chats Gear Up To Celebrate Metallica, Hint At New Music

Earlier in June, smoko lords The Chats unveiled the rather large news that they'd be appearing on the upcoming celebratory compilation The Metallica Blacklist, an album boasting over 50 artists from every corner of the globe and the genre-sphere taking on an official Metallica cover.

In conjunction with the re-issuing of Metallica's prolific self-titled 1991 full-length, aka The Black Album, due for release later this year, the LA thrash icons are also exponentially expanding on their upcoming 30th anniversary proceedings for the influential album with the release of The Metallica Blacklist, a 50+ stacked celebration exploring the entirety of The Black Album, including Enter Sandman, Nothing Else Matters and every other iconic moment in between. 

With a range of bands and artists tackling their own interpretations of a fave track from what is largely considered to be one of the greatest rock records of all time, there's an eye-watering Who's Who lined up to grace the lavish tribute album, including St Vincent, Mac DeMarco, Phoebe Bridgers, Weezer and Miley Cyrus to name but a small few. And with bands spanning every corner of the world, from Los Angeles to Nigeria and beyond, it's the appearance of Sunny Coast pub rockers The Chats that will fly the Aussie flag proudly come September when the digital edition of The Metallica Blacklist is released; and that's apparently not the only new things lying on the horizon in Chats-land, according to the band's Twitter update earlier this morning: 

Set to put their own unique spin on Holier Than Thou from the seminal self-titled Metallica, The Chats won't be the only ones getting their hands on the same cut for the The Metallica Blacklist, with the likes of Biffy Clyro, PUP and Corey Taylor also lined up to put their own spin on the caustic 90s tune. 

And as if the announcement of the original album's re-issuing both digitally and physically wasn't enough to get Metallica fans salivating alongside the impending covers compilation (hello, expanded vinyl collection), it also comes with the beautiful cherry on top that all profits from the upcoming releases will be donated to charities of each contributing artist's choice, along with Metallica's own foundation, as the band explained in a recent news announce: 

"One hundred percent of the profits go to charity – 50% to our own All Within My Hands and 50% to a charity of each artist’s choice. In addition to raising money for charity, we wanted to show that Metallica’s music transcends genres, distance, and cultures, and we like to think that – with everyone’s help – we’ve done just that. It was important to us that the artists could choose whichever song they most connected to; it didn’t matter if we already had multiple versions of a song, if an artist wanted to cover that song, so be it. We were honoured to have artists of this calibre want to be a part of the project and we hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed putting it all together!"

For fans of all things The Chats, the excitement of the imminent Metallica-fest heading our way in a few short months is just one of few things to get pumped on, with the trio also revealing they news that they'd been writing new material for a new album to follow up last year's full-length High Risk Behaviour. And if the debut full-length released in the year from hell that was 2020 is anything to go by, we can expect some exhilarating punked-up goodness from The Chats' next album shenanigans.  

Sadly amongst all the good news, a little rain must fall, with the raucous trio's previously planned shows in NSW and QLD postponed amid the current developing COVID-19 situation in both states. In the meantime though; jump on a smoko, grab a pub feed and get pumped for a huge couple of months from The Chats. For more show info, hit up theGuide to keep up to date, and keep your ears peeled in September for Metallica's anniversary sonic soiree.