Songfacts®:

• "Metallica's "72 Seasons" delves into the crucial formative years of our lives when the die is cast to determine who we become as adults. The song highlights how childhood traumas or negative experiences shape our adult selves. The lyrics use powerful imagery to convey the detrimental impact of past experiences on our present, particularly those who have been affected by violence.
• Wrath of man
  Violence, inheritance
  Wrath of man
  Thrive upon, feeding on
  Seventy-two seasons gone
  
  Metallica's James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, and Kirk Hammett wrote "72 Seasons." James Hetfield has displayed a violent temper when performing. In 1986, he punched Lars Ulrich in the stomach after a disagreement about what song to play during an encore. He has also been known to break guitars and other equipment on stage.
  
  Hetfield has attributed his mannerisms to a challenging upbringing. His parents were very strict, adhering to their Christian Science beliefs. At 13, his father left without explanation, leaving his mother to break the news at church camp. His mother got cancer but refused medical treatment, a practice in line with their faith. She passed away when James was 16 years old in February 1980.
  
  Metallica's 1991 track "The God That Failed" is about the struggle between faith and reality and how Hetfield felt betrayed by the Christian Science beliefs of his mother.
• "72 Seasons" is the title track of Metallica's 12th studio album. Produced by Greg Fidelman with James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, the album is over 77 minutes long and was released on the band's own Blackened Recordings label. Fidelman also co-produced their 2011 album Lulu (a collaboration with Lou Reed), 2016's Hardwired... to Self-Destruct and their 2020 live record, S&M2.
• Hetfield said "72 Seasons" was inspired by a book about childhood where he read about how we evolve after the first 72 seasons (18 years) of our lives.
  
  "How do you evolve and grow and mature and develop your own ideas and identity of self after those first 72 seasons? Some things are more difficult than others - you know, some things you can't unsee and they're with you for the rest of your life, and other things you're able to rewind the tape and make a new tape in your life," he said. "So that's the real interesting part for me, is how you're able to address those situations as an adult and mature."
  
  Despite the darkness in his life and career, Hetfield believes in finding hope and focusing on the light. "Everyone has some sense of hope or light in their life, and, obviously, music is mine," he explained. "And the song specifically talks about gathering of people at a concert and [being] able to see the joy and the life and the love that comes out of music and the family and the kinship in that, and just a sense of uplifting."
• Tim Saccenti directed the video. Filmed in Los Angeles, it shows the band performing the song in a fiery environment. Saccenti is a music video director who has worked with artists such as Run The Jewels, Depeche Mode and Korn. He got the gig for this song after impressing the band with his work on the 72 Seasons lead single, "Lux Aeterna."
• Greg Fidelman and Lars Ulrich had a lot of work sifting through the riffs in the early stage of writing for 72 Seasons. "Me and Lars would listen to riffs together, and we'd categorize them really quickly," Fidelman recalled to Metallica's So What! website. "It's a fast riff, it's a slow riff, it's a 'picking patterns,' it's metal. And then give it a grade."
  
  After they had gone through the first 300 riffs, Hammett sent them another 700. Fidelman and Ulrich had to go through those as well and narrow them down to the most promising. Once they had a pile of A-list riffs, they would pick 10 or 12 for a day and work on them.
• "72 Seasons" won for Best Metal Performance at the Grammy Awards in 2024. It was Metallica's ninth Grammy, and their first since "My Apocalypse" won the same award 15 years earlier.