Metallica - Hero Of The Day

JUL 01 1996 · 12:00

Metallica - Hero Of The Day (1996) Director: Anton Corbijn Era: Post-Thrash Alt-Metal Pivot Era (1996) - Metallica's Load cycle marked a seismic stylistic shift away from thrash orthodoxy toward blues-inflected alternative metal, coinciding with MTV's mainstream rock dominance and the industry's mid-90s appetite for crossover heavy acts. High. This video is a primary document of one of the most contested and culturally significant genre pivots in modern rock history, directed by one of the most celebrated visual artists in music video history. It demonstrates the potential of the format as a vehicle for social commentary, self-aware celebrity critique, and narrative filmmaking, and stands as a key artifact for studying the intersection of alternative metal, European art direction, and mid-90s media culture. The embedded television-within-video structure and stop-motion surrealism give it strong cross-disciplinary research utility. Context: Released in 1996, 'Hero of the Day' arrived at a moment of significant cultural turbulence for Metallica. The Load album represented a radical aesthetic departure, shorter hair, eyeliner, blues influences, and a wholesale rejection of thrash iconography, that divided the band's fanbase and generated intense critical debate. The video, helmed by renowned Dutch auteur Anton Corbijn, channels this tension through a media-saturation narrative: a disaffected, drug-using youth whose entire reality is mediated by television imagery of Metallica themselves. The embedded genre parodies (Western, game show, news, advertisement) constitute a self-aware critique of celebrity commodification and mass media's colonization of everyday consciousness, highly resonant in a mid-90s cultural landscape already processing the implosions of grunge and the rise of post-ironic media culture. The warm, muted, near-monochrome visual palette, consistent with Corbijn's photographic signature, grounds the video's conceptual ambitions in a tactile, unglamorous realism. Director notes: The music video for 'Hero of the Day' was directed by Anton Corbijn and filmed in August 1996 in Los Angeles, CA, premiering on August 21, 1996. The video follows a drug-addled youth spending the day watching television, with every channel featuring Metallica in a different genre parody: a Western film titled 'Load,' a boxing match, a commercial for a drink also titled 'Load,' a game show called 'Hero of the Day' (parodying Jeopardy!), and a news broadcast. The video ends with the protagonist passing out and hallucinating stop-motion robot creatures emerging from his ear before waking and vomiting. The production was credited with film producer Richard Bell. The video was the promotional vehicle for Metallica's second single from the album Load, released September 10, 1996 on Elektra Records. It became their second consecutive number-one hit on the US Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.