Released: August 21, 1987
Cliff Burton was gone, Jason Newsted was the new guy, and Metallica’s first release after Master of Puppets contained five tracks written by other bands. Under the circumstances, a cheap covers EP could have looked like a way to avoid bigger questions. It ended up answering the most important one.
Released in August of 1987, The $5.98 E.P. – Garage Days Re-Revisited introduced Newsted on record alongside James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, and Lars Ulrich. The band rehearsed in Ulrich’s garage before recording at A&M and Conway Studios. That distinction matters: nobody simply parked a microphone beside a lawnmower and hoped for the best.
The bigger question is why five borrowed tracks revealed so much about whether Metallica could still work as a band after losing Burton.
Part of the answer sits in the song selection. Diamond Head, Holocaust, Killing Joke, Budgie, and the Misfits supplied different pieces of Metallica’s musical vocabulary: British metal, creeping riffs, post-punk tension, and horror-punk. Put those influences in the same room, and the connections are obvious. Diamond Head’s “Helpless” bounces along on a guitar figure sharpened by Hetfield’s picking, while Holocaust’s “The Small Hours” stretches its slower riff until it practically drags its boots across the floor.
Metallica sounds equally at home in both settings. Ulrich pushes the changes in “Helpless” with busy fills, then gives “The Small Hours” enough breathing room to turn sinister before the arrangement suddenly accelerates. Hammett cuts across the faster section with a squealing lead, and the band eventually drops back into the original crawl. That swing between patience and panic comes from the same instincts behind “Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” even when somebody else wrote the song.
Newsted’s place in the lineup becomes clearer through the rhythm section. His bass jumps out during Budgie’s “Crash Course in Brain Surgery,” working against the crooked guitar riff while Ulrich keeps the beat bouncing. On Killing Joke’s “The Wait,” bass, guitar, and drums tighten around the same repeating figure until every instrument sounds wired into the next. Considering how thoroughly Newsted’s bass disappeared into the mix on … And Justice for All the following year, hearing him so clearly here suggests a different direction Metallica could have taken.
Hammett leaves his marks across the arrangements. Neither the original “Helpless” nor “The Wait” included a guitar solo, which gave him room to add something without retracing another player’s work. His leads loosen up the spaces around Hetfield’s clipped-rhythm playing and make both covers sound unmistakably tied to this version of the band.
Hetfield approaches the lyrics with similar directness. In “Helpless,” he barrels through lines about bright lights, loud music, and owning the stage like none of it requires explanation. “The Wait” moves into decay, poisoned water, and distorted thinking, but his delivery stays blunt. Then “Last Caress / Green Hell” stitches two Misfits songs together, pairing grotesque lyrics with an almost cheerful melody before the second half breaks into a frantic sprint.
That medley also captures the band’s sense of humor. After all the shouting and scrambling, Metallica leaves in a deliberately sour scrap of Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills.” The ending sounds like four guys cracking themselves up after spending twenty-five minutes figuring out how to share the same space. The recording keeps enough grit around the instruments to preserve that atmosphere without burying the playing underneath it.
Burton’s death sits behind the entire EP, but Garage Days Re-Revisited never tries to explain that loss or turn it into a statement. The band simply works through songs it already loves and lets the chemistry tell the story.
So why did five borrowed tracks reveal so much about Metallica’s future? Because the immediate question was whether Hetfield, Hammett, Ulrich, and Newsted could still sound like a band together. Newsted’s audible bass, Hammett’s added solos, the colliding Misfits songs, and that ridiculous Iron Maiden ending all supply the same answer: they could.
Written by Rob Joncas for DeadNoteMedia.
Artist information and music courtesy of the band.
© 2026 DeadNoteMedia. All rights reserved.
DeadNoteMedia 