Coverocktober Song #18: "Last Caress/Green Hell" by Metallica

Our next selection in the darkness of the last week of Coverocktober comes courtesy of one of the best cover bands there's ever been, Metallica.

In 1987, the band released a five-song EP of covers called The $5.98 E.P. - Garage Days Re-Revisited, and then in 1998, they released Garage, Inc., which included a full album of new covers on disc one and then Garage Days (which had been unavailable since its original run in 1987) and some additional covers that had been B-sides to singles or were one-off recordings on disc two.

One of the covers from the 1987 Garage Days EP was a medley of two Misfits songs -- because it takes two Misfits songs to make one three and a half minute song -- "Last Caress/Green Hell."  Then at the end of the song, there's a little wonky, out-of-tune version of the opening riff to Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills."  The Misfits songs are pretty true to the originals, but Metallicized.

"Last Caress" has been a standard at Metallica live shows over the years, though they usually leave "Green Hell" out of it.  The song was also the centerpiece of a minor controversy.  At the 1996 MTV Europe Music Awards, the band was supposed to perform "King Nothing," but MTV forbid the band from swearing or using pyrotechnics.  So they did what any good metal band would do:  they played a song about murder and rape, which got them banned from MTV for a few years.

"Green Hell" is a blistering hardcore song, originally released by The Misfits in 1983, but in my mind, that takes a backseat to "Last Caress."  The original version of "Last Caress" (recorded in 1980) is one of my favorite Misfits songs, and it's widely considered one of their best songs and one of the best punk songs ever, for that matter.  In a 2019 poll, it was voted by New Jersey residents -- New Jerseyeans?  New Jersers?  New Jerseyganders?  New Jersies? -- as the best song ever released by a band or artist from New Jersey, beating out Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Skid Row, and other great Jersey bands and artists.  That's crazy.

The lyrical content of the song is disturbing, purportedly the fictional confession of a killer and rapist.  The opening stanza is about as brutal as it gets:  "I got something to say / I killed a baby today / And it doesn't matter much to me / As long as it's dead."  That's followed by a stanza about raping "your mother."  Then the chorus is about longing for "sweet lovely death," though whether that's the killer wanting to die or talking about giving his victims "one last caress" before they die is unclear.  But the way Glenn Danzig sings the song has a macabre beauty to it, where if you weren't listening to the lyrics, you might think it's a punk cover of a late '50s/early '60s teen tragedy song.  It's a hell of a song, but certainly not for the faint of heart.