The band played their own music at the barrels during distillery
Metallica are launching their own brand of whiskey, which they’re calling ‘Blackened’ and billing as “the next evolution of whiskey”.
The band reportedly used a unique, patent-pending “sonic enhancement” process known as ‘Black Noise’ to “shape” the whiskey’s flavour. This involved using custom playlists of Metallica’s music – a different one for each batch – during the distilling process.
The ‘Black Noise’ process involves playing Metallica’s music through a subwoofer to disrupt the whiskey inside its barrel, supposedly affecting it on a molecular level and causing “increased wood interaction that kicks up the wood-flavor characteristics in the whiskey.”
The drink was devised by the metal heavyweights in collaboration with Dave Pickerell, a well-known figure in the bourbon industry and former master distiller at Maker’s Mark.
A new website for the whiskey describes Metallica and Pickerell as “unapologetic masters of craft in their respective fields, they’ve built world-renowned legacies by carving out new spaces and bringing their singular, incendiary perspectives to everything they touch.”
The site continues: “Blackened is a testament to the creative process, to the hard work and determination required to make something from nothing. It’s a monument to the ones who charge into the fray and come out the other side stronger, together. Fueled by decades of creative passion, Blackened is a distillation of the incomparable bond between the band and their community of fans.”
The whiskey is available to order now, and costs $53 dollars a bottle – not including shipping.
It’s not the only high-cost Metallica merch collaboration to emerge this week. On Tuesday (August 28), the band unveiled a new line of Nixon watches, with each new model representing one of their classic albums.