Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, I had a thing for industrial metal. It was a subgenre I affectionately and dorkily referred to as “Terminator metal,” something that stemmed from my obsession with the first two Terminator movies.
While I’m sure a metal fan more erudite than I had a more accurate designation for it, “Terminator metal” to me was industrial metal with concepts concerning futurology, expedited mechanization and the inadvertent or planned obsolescence of mankind as a result of burgeoning technology. And of course, mankind fighting against nigh-indestructible robots sent back in time by an adaptive, omnipresent AI to destroy them.
In other words, Man vs. Machine.
This man vs. machine motif from the Terminator films was prevalent in Meshuggah’s “Destroy, Erase Improve” and “Chaosphere” albums, as well as Fear Factory’s “Demanufacture” and “Obsolete,” which were in constant rotation on my Discman. Also in the mix were bands like Sybreed, Mnemic, Godflesh, Static-X and Pitchshifter.
The reason for all this exposition is to emphasize how much I geeked when I first discovered “Spit out the Bone,” the first Metallica song ever to deal with the man vs. machine motif.
While it wouldn’t be accurate to consider “Spit Out the Bone” an industrial metal song – it’s thrash metal through and through – it can most definitely be categorized as “Terminator metal.”
The song is fast, marching at the beginning with deliberate precision and then – like a terminator honed in on its target – surges into a T-1000-like sprint, accompanied by blistering riffs and hammering drums that rival even the most decorated of speed anthems from Metallica’s glory days like “Damage Inc.,” “Blackened” or “Battery.”
The vocals are James Hetfield at his best: semi-growling, semi-chanting as he beckons humanity to assimilate with the machine race: “Remove your heart, it’s only good for bleeding/Bleeding through your fragile skin/Remove your thought cause it’s only for deceiving,” and suffused with anger when he recites the chorus, “Long live machine/The future supreme/Man overthrown/Spit out the bone.”
Hetfield also hits all the singing notes with perfectly during the bridges, particularly the second bridge, where the machine overlord once more beckons for the listener to abandon the last remnants of their humanity:
“Stop breathing and dedicate to me
Stop dreaming and terminate for me
All meaning you dedicate to me
All feelings you terminate for me
One facet of “Spit out the Bone” that I find interesting, especially in comparison to industrial benchmarks like Fear Factory’s “Demanufacture” is that Metallica’s machine oppressors are less outwardly callous. In “Demanufacture,” all-out-war between man and machine is in full swing, with the machines employing remorseless brutality in their methods of consolidation: “The conscious man is dead/And I buried him/Beneath this scarred tissue/Armored skeleton”
In “Spit out the Bone,” the machines, like a cult leader, either haven’t yet had to resort to that or are more nuanced in their approach. Instead of declaring that they want to wipe out all humans like the pests they see them, instead they welcome them. The machine overlord in “Spit out the Bone” would rather humans unify with machines as it’s their only logical choice – their true purpose.
Of course, this could all be a ruse on the machines’ part, a stratagem devised to more effectively enmesh mankind into machine control, but an astute one in that the machines appeal to one of humanity’s most glaring needs: acceptance and social connection.
“Come unto me and you will feel perfection/Come unto me, you’ll never feel rejection,” the machine lord proposes in the song’s very first lines.
In the second verse the machine lord continues with his offerings, though they are more glaring in their intent to absorb humanity into the robotic fold:
“Plug into me, I guarantee devotion
Plug into me and dedicate
Plug into me and I’ll save you from emotion.”
Getting back to the instrumentalism of the song, if you’ve read my 8 Best Metallica Songs for your Gym Workout Playlist article, you probably know that I appreciate a good Kirk Hammet guitar solo. It’s frenzied, triumphant, exhibits various pitch levels and suits the song’s overarching feeling of the machines marching incessantly over everything.
Speaking of the machines marching incessantly over everything, the music video for “Spit out the Bone” is also a perfect complement to the song. The Phil Mucci directed video depicts a group of the last remaining humans revolting against the machines and is a fascinating conflation of Deathklok, Power Rangers and Terminator.
The video starts out with flashing images of different types of human tissue – brain, innards, eyeballs, hearts and bones – juxtaposed with their mechanized equivalents – interlocking gears, circuitry, motor engines, camera lenses and metal frames.
The shots are both fascinating and ominous, and though the tone of the video is balanced by the campiness of the fight scenes – with human rebels taking on machine versions of the Red Guards from Emperor Palpatine’s chambers – the imagery remains haunting throughout, such as the aforementioned body parts and machine-parts montage and later scenes like lost World War II documentary footage showing military regimes bowing to the floating machine lords and famous landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and Eiffel Tower being laser-blasted by robots into they’re overgrown and assimilated by a techno-organic virus.
So what does “Spit out the Bone” mean exactly, besides a cool way of saying one is eschewing their very humanity?
“We could be a much more efficient race if we just allow computers to help us,” Hetfield explained in an interview with Metallica’s official fanzine. “And yeah, they are helping us, but how far does that go? All of that craziness. So ‘Spit Out the Bone’ is that your bones aren’t needed. They break.
Drummer Lars Ulrich added that the song “was an adventure” in an interview with Rolling Stone. “I have versions of that song that are two to three minutes longer,” he continued. “We just kept going and going and going. That was also the first song where we went, ‘Wait a minute, is there too much of a good thing here?’ And then we started peeling it back. It was one of those where you just keep going to different universes and different modes and areas because it was super fun. It was like this journey. Old-school Mercyful Fate–type stuff was kind of the inspiration for that.”
“Spit out the Bone” is evocative of Metallica’s high-energy, aggressive, speed-metal glory days balanced with their modern day sophistication and composure. It’s heavy, has an intriguing, Terminator-metal motif and is the perfect song for an old school Metallica fan to give a listen to reinvigorate their spark for the band. It’s all of these elements and more which make “Spit out the Bone” one of the best Metallica songs of the past 20 years.
Long live Machine.
Do you agree that “Spit out the Bone” is one of the best Metallica songs of the past 20 years? Let us know in the comments.
