Songfacts®:

• James Hetfield sings here of someone whose lover has died, and he is looking forward to them being reunited in the afterlife.
• When Metallica started tracking the song, they found they were overthinking it and were forced to use one of the preproduction rehearsal takes. Lars Ulrich explained to Rolling Stone:
  
  "With 'Now That We're Dead,' we recorded it and everything kept getting tighter and precise, and all of a sudden you go, wait a minute, I think we just beat all the life out of this thing [laughs]. We went back and listened to the preproduction floor takes – almost like the last rehearsals – and it's like, 'Hey, wait a minute. There's a completely different vibe there. It sounds like a living, breathing entity rather than something put together by a drill sergeant.' [Laughs] So we went with a version that was a little bit looser."
• The song received its live debut on January 11, 2017 during the band's convert at the Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, South Korea. The band debuted another Hardwired track, "Halo of Fire" later on in the gig.
• "Now That We're Dead" served as the entrance and exit theme for WWE wrestler The Undertaker during his Wrestlemania 36 match against AJ Styles on April 4, 2020.