Metallica came to Moscow and sang Viktor Tsoi — in Russian

On July 21, the American rock group Metallica played at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium as part of their WorldWired world tour. In the middle of the concert, bassist Robert Trujillo and guitarist Kirk Hammett, left alone on stage, unexpectedly broke into Viktor Tsoi’s “Gruppa Krovi” (“Blood Type”) — in Russian. Their unexpectedly touching and powerful performance soon had the audience singing along.

During each concert on their tour, Metallica has been performing place-specific covers for local fans. For example, in Berlin, they played Rammstein’s “Engel”; in Paris, Johnny Hallyday’s “Ma gueule”; in Manchester, “I Wanna Be Adored” by The Stone Roses; and in Prague, “Jožin z bažin” by Czech musician Ivan Mládek.

Kino’s guitarist, Yuri Kasparyan, whose solo in “Gruppa Krovi” (“Blood Type”) Kirk Hammett so diligently replicated at Luzhniki Stadium, called Metallica’s cover “kind of funny and very cool.” “But when I started listening closely,” he added, “I realized that they didn’t really take the trouble to pick up on the details. You know, they played like sledgehammers,” he told Life Shot.