Song · Metallica
“For Whom The Bell Tolls” by Metallica
From the album Ride the Lightning (1984)
“For Whom The Bell Tolls” by Metallica appears on 41 radio countdowns from 13 stations between 1990 and 2026. It was first released in 1984 on the album Ride the Lightning. Its best result is #3 on the WJJO Frequent Rocker Top 100 Songs of 2023. In the combined RockLists rankings it is #7,245 alternative song of all time.
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"For Whom the Bell Tolls" comes stomping out of Ride the Lightning, Metallica's second album, from 1984, and it opens with Cliff Burton turning the bass into a siege engine: a distorted, wah-soaked lead line stacked over a clean bass part and a layer of harmonics, three tracks of him in all.
Burton wrote it with James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, and the song takes its title and its nightmare from Hemingway's 1940 novel about the Spanish Civil War, homing in on the scene where five soldiers dug in on a hilltop are wiped out from the air. The band drags thrash down to a grim, grinding march, Hetfield barking over Ulrich's slow-motion pounding, and the whole thing tolls like a funeral. Rolling Stone ranked it 39th among the greatest heavy metal songs in 2023, and it sits near the very top of the band's most-played live songs.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
Indie & Adult Alternative
Classic Rock
Hard Rock & Metal
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
Also listed as: For Whom the Bell Tolls; For Whom The Bells Toll; For Whom the Bells Tolls.
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