James Hetfield Gets Emotional After Seeing Thousands Of Football Fans Singing ‘Enter Sandman’

The crowd at Virginia Tech’s college football game triggered seismographs on September 3 when Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ blasted through the speakers. James Hetfield got goosebumps by even talking about it on Sirius XM.

Metallica has created many hit songs throughout the years. Even people who do not know the band are at least familiar with a few of their songs, like ‘Nothing Else Matters,’ ‘The Unforgiven,’ and ‘Enter Sandman.’ These three songs were featured in ‘The Black Album,’ and its remastered edition was recently released to celebrate the record’s 30th anniversary.

‘Enter Sandman’ was the album’s lead track and ranked No. 16 on the US Billboard Hot 100 list. The song triggered the album sales, selling over 30 million copies and making the record a well-known legend. Even after 30 years, people are still listening and enjoying the song.

On September 3, there was a college football game between Virginia Tech Hokies and UNC Tarheels which hosted 66,000 people in the audience. The crowd started to jump up and down and sing along to ‘Enter Sandman’ before the game began. The crowd triggered a seismograph which is an instrument to measure earthquakes.

This was an incredible view to watch for both Metallica fans and the band. James Hetfield also saw this video and talked about it in his interview. The singer stated that he gets goosebumps when talking about it and revealed that the song was not written specifically to hype up a crowd because if they did that, the results would have been different.

Here is how he expressed his emotions:

“Oh it is – I tell you, even just talking about it, I get goosebumps. It was spectacular. In the Virginia Tech game, everyone jumping. I mean the military, the crowd, the team. I mean, everybody. And I tell you, it has been an eight-year kind of progression with it, but to be a part of their lives, to be a part of their team, and to pump people up with that, there’s no way.

We can site and try to write something that, ‘Oh, we need a song to pump the crowd up.’ You can try to do that, but it’s not gonna work. It’s just not. So all of these things happen for a reason. It was out of our hands, out of our control. I mean, those fans of Virginia Tech, they’re the ones that made that. I mean, they needed that. So they found our song, and we got chosen for that. So we’re grateful.”

You can watch the crowd going crazy over ‘Enter Sandman,’ see Hetfield’s reaction, and check out the seismograph results below.