For over two decades Metallica have been testing the boundaries of speed, heaviness and volume with their music, selling over 85 million albums in the process and becoming one of the biggest musical acts in American history. Their early years were a blur of drunken club dates and endless tours. Later they became one of the world's most respected extreme metal acts despite the death of their bass player Cliff Burton. They have engaged in a legal tussle with Napster and go through rehab and therapy to emerge from the other side a new and wiser band. As well as telling Metallica's story with a level of detail and eyewitness veracity which has never been attempted before, Joel McIver has exposed the biggest myths about the band and told the simple truth about how they originated and what the real facts are. He has interviewed over 75 prominent musicians, producers, writers, band associates and Metallica fan members to get to the truth behind what really happened in the world of Hetfield, Ulrich and co.