Metallica frontman James Hetfield has hailed Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi as his personal ‘riff lord’.
Speaking during an episode of his SiriusXM radio show, James Hetfield’s Riff Life, on the 24/7 Metallica channel Maximum Metallica, the singer/guitarist introduces Sabbath’s 1971 track Children Of The Grave by saying, “Tony Iommi is the riff lord in my mind.”
He adds: “He is the one that has inspired me the most out of any guitar player for my rhythm guitar playing and songwriting.”
He then explains why the Children Of The Grave riff in particular is so special: “Obviously, Tony is the riff lord and everyone starts the song together on the one riff. Basically Tony plays off that riff, goes in to hit the big giant chords, which opens the song up.
“I really love the drum overdub that they did to help with that percussion of the riff and the real cool, ghostly guitar sounds at the very end.”
Iommi – who co-founded Black Sabbath with Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward in 1968 – has been hailed as the pioneer of heavy metal guitar playing, with such early, down-tuned riffs as those on Black Sabbath, War Pigs and Iron Man having a profound influence on the genre.
In 2015, Hetfield said that if he had to name one band as his favourite, it would be Sabbath. When Guitar World interviewed him and Iommi at the same time in 1992, he revealed that he discovered their music by rooting through his older brother’s record collection.
“Their album covers really drew me in,” he recalled. “I immediately thought, ‘I gotta out this one.’ And when I did, I couldn’t believe it. It was like, ‘Whoa! Heavy as shit.’ Sabbath was everything that the ’60s weren’t… Their music was so cool because it was completely anti-hippie. I hated the Beatles, Jethro Tull, Love and all that other happy shit.”
In the same interview, Iommi said that the respect ran both ways: “My son bought me your last album [1991’s Metallica], and it’s one of the first recordings I’ve received in a long time that I can praise without reservation. I listen to it in my car all the time.”
Sabbath and Metallica have crossed paths multiple times. In 2006, as Sabbath were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Metallica covered Iron Man with Iommi, Osbourne, Butler and Ward in attendance. In 2009, Osbourne joined the band onstage and sang Iron Man and Paranoid.
In July last year, Metallica were one of the many support acts who appeared at Sabbath’s final show, Back To The Beginning, at Birmingham’s Villa Park. They played a six-song setlist which included covers of Sabbath’s Hole In The Sky and Johnny Blade. Sabbath’s headline set marked the first time their four founding members had shared a stage since 2005, and it was Osbourne’s final performance before his death on July 22, 2025, aged 76.
