Metallica - For Whom The Bell Tolls (live in Gothenburg 2011)
"For Whom the Bell Tolls" is a song by American thrash metal band Metallica. It was released as the second promotional single from their second album, Ride the Lightning. The song was inspired by Ernest Hemingway's 1940 novel of the same name about the dishonor of modern warfare and the protagonist's imminent doom during the bloody Spanish Civil War. Specific allusions are made to the scene in which five soldiers are obliterated during an air-strike, after taking a position on a hill.
"For Whom The Bell Tolls" [Lyrics]
Make his fight on the hill in the early day
Constant chill deep inside
Shouting gun, on they run through the endless grey
On they fight, for they're right, yes, but who's to say?
For a hill, men would kill, why? They do not know
Stiffened wounds test their pride
Men of five, still alive through the raging glow
Gone insane from the pain that they surely know
For whom the bell tolls
Time marches on
For whom the bell tolls
Take a look to the sky just before you die
It's the last time he will
Blackened roar, massive roar, fills the crumbling sky
Shattered goal fills his soul with a ruthless cry
Stranger now, are his eyes, to this mystery
He hears the silence so loud
Crack of dawn, all is gone except the will to be
Now they see what will be, blinded eyes to see
For whom the bell tolls
Time marches on
For whom the bell tolls