Artist: Metallica
Song: King Nothing
Official release: June 1996, on the album Load
Single release: January 1997
Lineup: James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Jason Newsted.
The official video for “King Nothing” was directed by Matt Mahurin, filmed in December 1996 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and released on January 7, 1997. Although Load came out in June 1996, the single arrived several months later, on the same day as the video.
The video takes everything into a frozen landscape: discarded crowns, a king who never quite becomes a king, and a fairly direct image of empty power. The idea is simple but highly symbolic: a man walks through the cold, throwing away one crown and putting on another, over and over again. By the end, crowns are scattered everywhere and several other “kings of nothing” appear. It isn’t a complicated narrative video, but it captures the idea of empty ambition, ego, power, and absurd repetition perfectly.
The song wasn’t originally called “King Nothing.” During the demo stage, its title was “Load.” James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich recorded that demo at Lars’s home studio, nicknamed The Dungeon, on November 30, 1994. The song was later renamed, but its original title stayed around and eventually became the name of the album.
Load wasn’t given that name by chance; it has a direct connection to the early version of this song. It was one of the building blocks of Metallica’s new era, as the band moved away from the mold of the Black Album and experimented with something more groove-oriented, more rooted in heavy rock, and less focused on pure thrash. The album began taking shape from riffs James had collected on home tapes, which he and Lars later organized at The Dungeon. This was one of the first demos from that batch, recorded just after “Streamline,” which later became “Wasting My Hate.”
Near the end of the song, the line “Off to never-never land” works as a nod to “Enter Sandman.” It’s a great touch because it connects the massively successful Metallica of the Black Album with the stranger and more controversial Load era. James later said that “King Nothing” was, in a way, a kind of response to “Enter Sandman.”
So the song has a pretty rich history: it began as a demo called Load, helped give the album its name, and ended up speaking directly to the commercial monster that “Enter Sandman” had become. That’s quite a lot of crown for the king of nothing.
Completá la ronda Complete the circle