How A Line From Stephen King's The Stand Inspired A Classic Metal Band's Song And Album

Stephen King and heavy metal just make sense together. The famous author's subject matter spread of brutal horror, epic fantasy, and authoritarianism (among other things, like murderous cars) all fit perfectly into the leather-clad, guitar-shredding, shock-and-awe stylings of the metal genre, and the association was only bolstered by both King's work and the metal genre exploding in popularity around the same time in the late 1970s and early '80s.

The connection is particularly natural in the case of "The Stand," King's first dive into the epic fantasy genre in 1978 ahead of his "Dark Tower" series. A massive success in its day, "The Stand" has remained one of King's most popular and influential works, right alongside books like "The Shining," "It," "Carrie," and "Salem's Lot." It's also been one of his most heavily adapted, with miniseries versions of "The Stand" hitting in both 1994 and 2020, and a film adaptation reportedly in the works. Beyond that, the novel has been highly influential in other sectors of popular culture (Damon Lindelof has cited it as an inspiration for "Lost"), but especially in the new wave of heavy metal that was starting to pop off when the book first came out.

Of particular note, Metallica's seminal 1984 sophomore album "Ride the Lightning" and its title track both take their names from a line in the book, where a character uses the phrase in reference to execution by electric chair. Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett was reading the book at the time and found himself struck by the expression, which he brought to lead singer and frontman James Hetfield. "I remember thinking, 'Wow, what a great song title,'" Hammett told Rolling Stone in 2014. "I told James, and it ended up being a song and the album title."

If you're a metalhead, or a wistfully reformed metalhead like me, "Ride the Lightning" is about as foundational as "The Stand" is to the Stephen King universe. Sure, it's no "Master of Puppets," but what album is? You might think the odds would be long for two records in the same hyper-specific genre to take direct inspiration from the same book, but you'd be underestimating the reach of King's work and the shared interests of '80s metal musicians.

No other thrash metal band is even close to the stratosphere of fame where Metallica lives, but Anthrax is about as close as any. That's largely thanks to their 1987 album "Among the Living," whose title track was directly inspired by "The Stand." Guitarist Scott Ian in particular has long been a huge fan of King's, and those who've read the book will easily see the connections with lyrics like, "Purge the world with fire / Damnation is the price he'll pay / For an evil man's desire / Good versus evil / The stand to vanquish evil." The song also namechecks the book's Captain Trips virus that wipes out a huge percentage of the country's population, not to be confused with the very real infectious disease the band is named after.

In 2024, King indirectly paid the respect back with a reference to Anthrax in his "You Like It Darker" short story collection. Some things just make sense together, and Stephen King stories and heavy metal are two of them.