With the announcement of their new album, “72 Seasons,” which will arrive April 14, Metallica has had to warn of scams being perpetuated via social media and YouTube. A 51-year-old Manhattan man was reportedly scammed by a fake Metallica YouTube channel into transferring more than $25K of Bitcoin.
“In the wake of last week’s exciting news of our new song, new album, and new tour, unfortunately the ugly side of social media made an appearance,” Metallica wrote. “Many of you have let us know about YouTube channels and live streams, as well as websites, claiming to offer Metallica Crypto giveaways in conjunction with last week’s announcement.”
“Let’s be as clear as possible. These are scams. They’re being streamed on fake YouTube channels posing to be ours and all pointing to websites that we do not run. Please remember — all of our official social media channels are verified. Always look for official verification before believing something wild and crazy to be true. We thank all of you who have been vigilant in reporting these live streams to YouTube and to us… please don’t let up!”
“Be familiar with the symbols that indicate an official channel and report anything that is a scam!”
Last week, Metallica frontman James Hetfield talked about how darkness inspired the band’s forthcoming record.
“’72 Seasons’ came out of a book I was reading about childhood, basically, and sorting out childhood as an adult,” he said. “And 72 seasons is basically the first 18 years of your life. How do you evolve and grow and mature and develop your own ideas and identity of self after those first 72 seasons? Some things are more difficult than others — you know, some things you can’t unsee and they’re with you for the rest of your life, and other things you’re able to rewind the tape and make a new tape in your life. So that’s the real interesting part for me, is how you’re able to address those situations as an adult and mature.”
He continued: “There’s been a lot of darkness in my life and in our career and things that have happened with us, but always having a sense of hope, always having the light that is in that darkness… Without darkness, there is no light, and being able to focus a little more on the light in life instead of all of the… how it used to be and how horrible it is… There’s a lot of good things going on in life — focusing on that instead, and it helps to balance out my life. And there’s no one meaning to it — everyone has some sense of hope or light in their life, and, obviously, music is mine. And the song specifically talks about gathering of people at a concert and [being] able to see the joy and the life and the love that comes out of music and the family and the kinship in that, and just a sense of uplifting.”
