TAYLOR SWIFT Bassist AMOS HELLER Shares Playthrough Video Of METALLICA's "Blackened"

The clip below features Taylor Swift bassist Amos Heller performing the Metallica classic, "Blackened", which he recently shared via his YouTube channel.

From Music Radar: "Taylor Swift bassist Amos Heller might know his way through a stadium pop set but don’t let that full you; his metal chops are untouchable, and he has just shot a totally ripping playthrough of Metallica classic Blackened in tribute to former Metallica bass player Jason Newsted.

Everyone knows the story of how Newsted, newly hired as Metallica’s bass player after the tragic death of Cliff Burton, never quite got the respect he deserved, with his bass guitar parts on his full-length ‘Tallica debut, …And Justice For All, famously turned all the way down. There was the ...And Justice For Jason mix of the album that restored the bass tracks, pumping them up to where many – band excepted – thought they should have been. Now we have Heller’s take on it.

Not that Heller is going all in and cribbing Newsted’s playing style. Newsted favoured a pick. Heller takes this on fingerstyle. But he nails the nigh-on Arctic bleakness of the track – one of the standouts in the Metallica catalogue – and the feel changes in what is a radically structured work of thrash metal."

Heller comments:

"I don't think I would be a musician if it wasn't for thrash metal, and I don't think I would love thrash if I hadn't listened to it every day of my freshman year riding to school in my brother's car with ...And Justice For All blazing out of the speakers. 

This album is an oddity...a killer metal album with no bass on it.  So I put some bass on it.  The modern tone I went for might not be the most era-specific, but it felt like a good fit to me.

This song was a real challenge, and I love playing it. Enjoy."