Louder Faster Stronger

But onstage in St. Petersburg and at the next two shows in Riga, Latvia, and Bologna, Italy, Metallica play exactly like the band that made Justice and 1986's Master of Puppets, with a cohesive fury that is all over Death Magnetic songs like "The Judas Kiss," "All Nightmare Long" and "My Apocalypse." They are not playing any of the new material yet, but it is hard not to miss the irony: At the same time that they have found balance in their lives and made a truce between one another, Metallica have gone back to their most intense, complicated records for inspiration.

"It was bold of them to put that movie out," says Rubin, an old friend of the group. "It clearly showed them at their worst. But when I walked in, they were a very different band. They were together." The album they made with him, Rubin claims, "feels like the Metallica I grew up with."

"I get nervous when everything becomes a sound bite," Ulrich says, pretending to shiver, one afternoon over a cup of tea in a Copenhagen hotel restaurant. "St. Anger, 2003, they don't get along. Death Magnetic, 2008, it's all hunky-dory. But Phil Towle said, when we were nearing the end of St. Anger, that everything we went through then would not come to fruition until the next go-round."

Ulrich beams. "Of all the things he was right about, he was really right about that."

It's a lot bigger than I thought," Hetfield says in a low, awe-struck voice.

He is in St. Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum, the world-famous art collection in the former Winter Palace of the Russian czars, standing in front of Rembrandt's "The Return of the Prodigal Son." Painted by the Dutch master from 1663 to 1665 and based on the New Testament parable, the picture is almost nine feet high and seven feet wide. The figures — the consoling father, bent over his ragged, errant son; the older brother, stiff with jealousy — are literally life-size.

The rest of Hetfield's party — his young son and two daughters; his wife, Francesca; Trujillo and his wife, Chlöe — are moving on to the next room. But Hetfield studies the painting intently for 10 minutes. Earlier, in the museum cafeteria, he told his daughter Marcella, 6, sitting on his knee, that he was excited to be in this museum "because my favorite painting is here." This is the first time he has seen the original.

Backstage at SKK Hall, Hetfield explains that he first saw a reproduction in rehab. "It was one of those workshops: 'Here's the painting. Do you remember the story?'" Hetfield, who was raised in a strict Christian Science family, laughs. "Nobody remembered it. But then we got deeper with it. 'What do you see? Which one is you — the father, the son, the jealous brother?'

"Well, I see myself in all of them — except I didn't have much forgiveness for myself. I discovered that." Hetfield laughs again, this time with the heartiness of someone who left a huge burden way behind him. "But there is definitely the jealous-son part. I see that in Lars' and my relationship."

Hetfield was in his last year of high school in Los Angeles, living with one of his two older half brothers, when he answered a newspaper ad, placed by Ulrich, looking for musicians to share his passion for underground metal. Hetfield's parents had divorced a couple of years earlier; then Hetfield's mother, Cynthia, an amateur opera singer, died of cancer when he was 17. (Hetfield also has a sister.) Ulrich, who moved to L.A. from Denmark in 1980, was an only child in a well-off bohemian family. His father, Torben, now 80, was a professional tennis player and had written about jazz for the Danish newspaper Politiken.

"It's weird — I don't know exactly what brothers are supposed to be like," Hetfield confesses. His half brothers "were a generation away, not close enough to be brothers, not far enough to be parental. For Lars and I, this is the closest we get to having brothers." But like siblings, "we battle for the steering wheel," and agreement does not come easy. "Compromise" — Hetfield says the word with distaste — "sounds weak."

Life between the two founders "has always been a strain," says Hammett, who joined Metallica in 1983, after Hetfield and Ulrich fired original guitarist Dave Mustaine. "There was a real bad spat in the first couple of months I was in the band — James pushing Lars, and Lars flying into his cymbals. It wasn't about anything important — who drank someone else's booze. I'll never forget it, because it erupted so quickly, in seconds. I'm between them — 'Guys, mellow out!' — and Cliff Burton is sitting there with a big smirk on his face, amused as hell, like he'd pulled up a seat at a boxing match."

"I think the guy is a genius," Ulrich says sharply of Hetfield, daring you to contradict him. "I also have to deal with that genius. Looking back on it, James Hetfield, the growly guy, was a character he put up to protect the vulnerable kid who went through so much with his mother and his whole upbringing. When he went through everything that's in the movie, he found a way to dismantle that character and bring more of himself up front."

Ulrich, in turn, learned to back off. Early in the making of Death Magnetic, he talked with Hetfield about returning not only to the sound of their mid-Eighties albums but the storytelling in those songs, often triggered by films and books. "James has always written the words," Ulrich says, "but the ideas came from both of us, initiated by things we shared . . .And Justice for All — we spent two hours watching Al Pacino in a courtroom [in the 1979 film of that name]. 'Creeping Death' — that was The Ten Commandments. We talked about having movie night again, once a week." Ulrich even showed Hetfield the "un-fucking-believable" 2004 German film Der Urtengang (Downfall), about Hitler's last days. "But I could see it wasn't connecting. I was confused, slightly disappointed. But I realized I had to let him go off on this by himself."