Despite devotion to his faith, Virgil abandoned his family when James was 13. Three years later James’s mother, Cynthia, died from cancer after refusing conventional medical treatment. James had no choice but to move in with his older half-brother David in nearby Brea, California. No more church for James, at least not for many years. His anger at his parents and his knowledge of the Bible proved potent, though. Whereas other metal bands embraced faux-Satanism to shock and scorn, Metallica steered clear of such clichés. Thanks to Hetfield’s subtle descriptions and reflections on what he had seen and read, a series of songs starting with “Creeping Death” thoughtfully critiques religion.

“Creeping Death” was inspired by scenes from Cecil B. DeMille’s epic film The Ten Commandments (1956). The song tells the story of the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, largely from the perspective of an angry God, seeking vengeance against the pharaoh and the Egyptians for enslaving his people, the children of Israel. The opening verse sets the stage: “Slaves / Hebrews born to serve, to the pharaoh / Heed / To his every word, live in fear / Faith / Of the unknown one, the deliverer / Wait / Something must be done, four hundred years.” One-word lines punctuate this verse and others, allowing Hetfield to hit points of emphasis.

The first word of the song, “Slaves,” is startling. The tone with which Hetfield snarls the word could be mistaken for anger directed towards slaves. But the second line quickly clarifies that the song will be about slaves who themselves are angry and certainly have an angry God on their side. The second line also tells us right away who the slaves are, the Israelites. It goes without saying that the life of a slave was terrible; “fear” does not do it justice. Nonetheless, the Hebrew people have “faith”—another one-word line—in the God of their fathers, the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Why, though, does God wait 400 years to liberate them? The brothers of Joseph did wrong, acting out of jealousy and selling him into slavery, but are the sins of the father really to be visited upon the sons? For how many generations? From a human perspective, 400 years of slavery does not seem like a fair punishment for what some ancestors did, especially considering that the descendants of Joseph, the brother sold into slavery, were among those who were enslaved.

The genius of “Creeping Death” is that without being explicit, it raises questions about God’s justice and about the rationality of believing in such a God. The story is told in such a way that we sympathize with the Hebrews and root for the vengeful God, but then afterward we are left to reflect and wonder about the justice and rationality of this God. It is the stuff of fantasy fiction, yet the story comes straight out of the Bible.

Consider the ambiguous line “Faith / Of the unknown one, the deliverer.” Does it refer to God or Moses or both? As the biblical story goes, Moses has a life of privilege until he becomes upset when he sees an Egyptian striking a Hebrew slave. In the spirit of vengeance, Moses kills the Egyptian and is forced to flee. Over time, Moses becomes the unlikely leader of a slave rebellion. In a sense, he, in his faith, becomes “the deliverer.” So is God perhaps “the unknown one”? Largely forgotten by the Israelites over the course of 400 years of slavery, this God will now make his presence felt. The narration shifts several times in the song, with God himself voicing certain sections, as when he says, “Now / Let my people go, land of Goshen / Go / I will be with thee, bush of fire.” The instruction to “let my people go” occurs in several places in the biblical text, including Exodus 8:20, where God tells Moses to deliver that message to the pharaoh. Thus God does not speak directly to the pharaoh. The “land of Goshen” was the area of Egypt inhabited by the Hebrews, from which they departed, and the “bush of fire” refers to God’s appearance to Moses in the form of a burning bush that was not consumed by flames. In this form, God gave the order to Moses to lead his people out of Egypt. God promised to be with them, but not in the form of the burning bush. Rather, as the biblical story goes, God led the people as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

The verse continues, “Blood / Running red and strong, down the Nile / Plague / Darkness three days long, hail to fire.” Egypt was warned in advance about the first plague, that the river would turn to blood and the fish would die. According to the Bible, though, the pharaoh was unimpressed with the plagues because his magicians could duplicate them. Thus the plagues did not seem like ample evidence that the God of the Hebrew slaves was powerful enough to warrant their release. The lyric “hail to fire” is not a call to worship, but rather a description of the seventh plague in which hail and fire (in the form of lightning) struck the land and killed people and animals. In The Ten Commandments the hail ignites into flames when it strikes the ground. The lyric “darkness three days long” refers to the frightening ninth plague, in which a “darkness that can be felt” descended upon Egypt for three days. Apparently, even that was not enough to scare the pharaoh into freeing the Hebrews.

Actually, the pharaoh considered freeing them more than once, but, as the biblical story goes, God repeatedly hardened the pharaoh’s heart such that the ruler did not give in to his own inclination. The question is: Why did God intervene in this way? The pharaoh hadn’t done anything awful by the standards of the time and place. Slavery was common practice. In the Old Testament, God does not forbid slavery—just the enslavement of one Hebrew by another. So it seems that God wanted to demonstrate his power and exercise his prerogative by taking his revenge. With the pharaoh’s heart hardened, and maybe his brain blocked, the stage was set for the most dreadful plague, the tenth and final, the death of the firstborn.

The chorus begins, “So let it be written / So let it be done.” It’s a pronouncement that sounds straight out of the Bible but which actually comes from the film The Ten Commandments. And in the movie it is Pharaoh Sethi speaking (later echoed by Ramesses II). In point of fact, the book of Exodus does not mention the name of the pharaoh. This is one among many reasons that scholars do not think that the story is historical. In addition, there is no Egyptian record of a slave rebellion anything like the one we find in the Bible. Nonetheless, “So let it be written / So let it be done” sounds perfect in the song, as if coming from the mouth of God. The pharaoh has been forewarned with nine plagues already, so he has sealed his own fate. The verse continues, “I’m sent here by the chosen one,” and the final line reveals the identity of the narrator: “I’m creeping death.” Cliff Burton reportedly described the eerie killer mist in the film as “creeping death,” lending a lyrical hand to Hetfield.

The song’s narrator claims to be sent by “the chosen one,” but that is an odd name or description for God. The Hebrews are, or become, God’s “chosen” people. They agree to worship only him, and he agrees to be their protector. The people are chosen, and Moses in particular is chosen by God to be their leader. So is Moses the chosen one? Perhaps, but Creeping Death says that he is sent by the chosen one, and Moses doesn’t actually send the tenth plague. God does. Moses is just the messenger. Perhaps God is the chosen one. Though God never calls himself that in scripture, the description fits in the sense that God is chosen by the Hebrews. Long before the Exodus story, Abraham chose to follow the one God. And in the desert, after fleeing Egypt, the Hebrews will accept a covenant whereby they commit themselves to the worship of the one God and the observance of his laws.

The upshot is that on this interpretation, the narrator, Creeping Death, is separate from God. His task is “to kill the firstborn pharaoh son.” Indeed, he will kill all firstborn Egyptian males. Thankfully, the young Egyptians do not die a violent death. Instead, they simply go to bed and fail to wake the next morning. But imagine the horror across the land, as mothers shriek upon the discovery of the lifeless bodies of their babies. A rare but real phenomenon, crib death, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), strikes fear in the hearts of new parents. The cause is unknown, but the baby simply stops breathing overnight. Creeping Death seems a suitable name for crib death.

In fact, another Metallica song, “Enter Sandman,” was originally inspired by SIDS, though during the writing process the song morphed into dealing with an older child who says his prayers, actually making it an even better fit for the tenth plague, which killed not only infants but all firstborn males. “Enter Sandman” includes the world’s creepiest child’s prayer. With each line repeated, the version in the song goes: “Now I lay me down to sleep / Pray the lord my soul to keep / If I die before I wake / Pray the lord my soul to take.” This child’s bedtime prayer dates back to the 18th century, a time when children died in far greater numbers than they do today in the developed world. Nonetheless, it is a scary prayer, acknowledging the fact that the child may die in his or her sleep. The prayer hung on a placard in my room as a kid in the 1970s, and I was certainly disturbed by it. In the Metallica song, the Sandman is transformed from the benevolent creature who sprinkles sand in your eye to bring pleasant dreams into the malevolent creature who brings nightmares and perhaps death.

“Creeping Death” continues with a ferocious verse as the eponymous agent of death sings, “Die by my hand / I creep across the land / Killing first-born man.” In live concert performances, particularly in the 1980s, the audience participation during this part was chilling, with hordes of angry young people repeatedly chanting “Die!” That sense of identification is indicative of the song’s ability to enlist the sympathies of early Metallica fans who felt oppressed (by parents, teachers, priests, bosses, or whomever) and lusted for revenge. Anyone unfamiliar with the ritual might have been scandalized at the sight and sound of thousands of young people chanting “Die!” The effect for the participants, though, was cathartic, a purging of negative emotions rather than a catalyst for negative actions.

The phrase “by my hand” is curious. Part of the song was written by Kirk Hammett and performed as “Die by His Hand” in Hammett’s previous band, Exodus. Creeping Death, whatever it is exactly, does not have hands. So we need to take “by my hand” metaphorically. It means that he’s doing it himself and very personally. Visually potent, “by my hand” invokes an image of a ghostly grip strangling the life from children as they sleep.

As in the first verse, the final verses are punctuated with single-word lines: “I / Rule the midnight air / The destroyer.” With a blaring “I” Hetfield barks the point of view of the narrator, Creeping Death. The claim to “rule the midnight air” fits the biblical story and appeals to the listener. In addition, crib death tends to strike between midnight and 9 a.m., and the deaths of the firstborn Egyptians took place overnight. The power of the line, though, derives from the audience identification. The angry young people to whom the song first appealed certainly liked to think of themselves as in charge after midnight. During the hours when authority figures slept, young people ruled. Creeping Death calls himself “the destroyer,” again a fitting image for the song and for the audience. In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, God is both the creator and the destroyer, creating the world in six days and destroying it in a flood. In the second book of the Bible, Exodus, God is a destroyer of the Egyptians in order to create a new nation of Israel.

“Creeping Death” effectively enlists the sympathies and identification of the audience who want to act out the role of the destroyer vicariously. With a novel or film we may identify with a character and root for him, but with a song we can identify all the more deeply by singing along and taking the point of view of the narrator. The fan who sings along to the record or the live performance is empowered by the first-person declaration that “I / Rule the midnight air / The destroyer.” I rule, and I am the destroyer. Destruction is much easier than construction, though. Hetfield creatively constructed the song, an act of empowerment. By contrast, the fans singing along imagine destroying something or someone.

The song continues, “Born / I shall soon be there / Deadly mass.” The single-word line “Born” is jarring. Who is born? We know, but the answer is left as an unspecified second person. You, the Egyptian (not the listener), are born. What happens next? “I shall soon be there.” It sounds like a benevolent promise to rescue or protect, but we know it is anything but that. The phrase “deadly mass” may be inspired by the film’s depiction of the plague as a deadly mist, but we can make a religious connection by seeing Creeping Death as enacting a “deadly mass.” The Catholic mass is a ritual reenactment of the Last Supper of Jesus, which itself was the annual Passover meal commemorating this very night from Exodus. In the Catholic mass the sacrifice of Jesus is recreated and participants eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus in the form of transubstantiated bread and wine. Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. In the Exodus story, liberation comes when the death of the firstborn Egyptians, including the Pharaoh’s son, finally convinces the ruler to free the Hebrews. In the New Testament, the sacrifice of Jesus is supposed to be done out of love, with God giving his only begotten son to atone for the sins of humanity. By contrast the sacrifice of the “deadly mass” is done out of vengeance, punishing the Egyptians for enslaving the children of Israel.

Again, the song invites identification with the lines, “I / Creep the steps and floor.” A sinister scene and presence is painted, even more haunting than in the film. The powerful agent does not need to be stealthy, but he nonetheless derives pleasure from the ability to wreak vengeance undetected. The identity of Creeping Death is again unclear. Is it God or a separate agent of God? At the very least, God seems to identify with his agent much as the listener identifies with the first-person narrator. After creeping the steps and floor, he brings “final darkness.” Recall that the ninth plague had brought three days of literal darkness to the land of Egypt. Now metaphorical darkness, death, will swallow the firstborn sons.

The song’s next line is a single word, “blood.” Significantly, in the first plague, the Nile had run red. Blood remains unseen when all is well. By contrast, grisly loss of life comes with bloodshed on the battlefield, and vampires silently sip the stuff from the necks of their victims. The targets of Creeping Death lose no blood, however. Instead the life drains from them without a mess. We get the explanation in the concluding lines: “Lamb’s blood painted door / I shall pass.” In the biblical story, God gives elaborate instructions for how every Israelite family is to slaughter and sacrifice a lamb. The blood of the lamb is then to be applied to the Hebrew houses so that God will “pass over” and spare the lives of the firstborn males inside. The story is celebrated and commemorated to this day in the Jewish holiday of Passover. Likewise, the story’s imagery was co-opted by Christian theology to enshrine the crucifixion of Jesus, the lamb of God. We who drink the lamb’s blood and eat his body in the form of communion will be wiped clean of sin and spared from damnation.

It is a powerful story, rich with symbolism, both in the Jewish original and the Christian sequel, but it raises puzzling and disturbing questions. For one, why did God need the Hebrews to apply the blood to the doors of their houses in order for God to know which ones to pass over? Wouldn’t an all-knowing God recognize the houses of his people without such a barbaric marking? He would have no reason to kill the firstborn sons of his chosen people, so they had no reason to feel particularly grateful for being passed over. In general, it is an unflattering portrait of God, and without exaggerating the details of the biblical story, the Metallica song shows us how nasty this God is. He let his chosen people be enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, and when he decided to liberate them he hardened the pharaoh’s heart so that the ruler resisted and the Lord had an excuse to wreak vengeance. This God seems a long way from the all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God of modern belief. But that is as it should be. The Old Testament never claims that God is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful. Yes, he created the world and is very powerful, but he has his limits. This is the God of a tribal people from the Iron Age.

What’s more, there is little, if anything, historical about the account. Egyptian records bear no trace of a massive slave rebellion or any mention of the Israelites. Archaeologists have combed the Sinai Peninsula in search of evidence of such an exodus and have come up completely empty-handed. Nearly all scholars agree that the story of Exodus was written in the sixth century BC during the Babylonian exile, drawing on existing oral and written traditions. While the Hebrew people lived in Babylonian captivity, they wrote a founding myth, according to which they had once (centuries before) been slaves in Egypt, where God freed them from bondage. Thus the story inspired hope that the Israelites would one day be freed from their Babylonian captors, and indeed they were.

Although “Creeping Death” exposes God as a nasty character, one perhaps unworthy of belief outside the Iron Age, the song nonetheless makes God seem cool. Like Tony Soprano, the God of “Creeping Death” is a bad guy we root for. It doesn’t matter that God is harsh and unfair in his treatment of the Egyptians. The Hebrews have been enslaved, and so we naturally extend our sympathy to them. We identify with them because we feel oppressed. Who doesn’t feel oppressed to one extent or another? Especially the teenagers to whom the song first appealed—never mind that most had life pretty good in retrospect. On their own, the Hebrews are unable to throw off the chains of oppression. Only a supernatural force can save them. It is the stuff of heavy metal fantasy, and so we sing along and pump our fists in the spirit of vengeance. As the Exodus story spoke to the Israelites in Babylonian exile, so “Creeping Death” spoke to alienated teenagers lost in high school hell, dreaming of the day they would be free.

Metallica’s critique of organized religion is subtle. By simply telling part of the story of Exodus in “Creeping Death” Hetfield’s lyrics expose the absurdity of belief in such a God. Likewise, as we shall see, by depicting televangelists and their victims in “Leper Messiah” Hetfield’s lyrics comment on the sad state of Christianity in contemporary America. Follow the money and you will find corruption.

The album Master of Puppets is pure in the band’s attempt to make music on their own terms. As the song “Damage, Inc.” declares and promises, the band are “Following our instinct not a trend / Go against the grain until the end.” Among other things, Metallica refused to make a music video despite being courted by MTV. Their suspicion of money-chasers would continue, and only intensify, on the subsequent album . . . And Justice for All. For “One,” a song on that album, Metallica would make their first video, but they did it on their own terms, cho...