See Metallica's BlizzCon 2021 performance get censored by random 8-bit music

Over the weekend, Metallica's performance became a huge talking point at the annual BlizzCon after their audio was replaced by some generic, copyright-free 8-bit music.

Only seconds into For Whom The Bell Tolls, the metallers were silenced by Twitch on the front page of the live streaming platform's Gaming section, seemingly due to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) situation that has been affecting Twitch and its content creators in recent times (since May 2020, hundreds of streamers have been getting takedown notices for using copyrighted material in their videos).

Read this: Metallica vs. Napster: The lawsuit that redefined how we listen to music

Of course, the band's actual virtual performance wasn't affected – only the audio for viewers on Twitch – so you can see James Hetfield and co. rocking out to some considerably less heavy and much more cheesy music, totally unaware of the situation online. Thankfully both renditions have been captured, so you can watch both the real version of For Whom The Bell Tolls, and the bizarre 8-bit performance below…

In other ’Tallica news, Lars Ulrich said in January that the band are making "glacial" progress on a new album. "These are the craziest of times and nothing is letting up," the drummer admitted. "There’s a little bit of movement [in that direction], but it’s hard to do a lot when we’re not together." Fingers crossed they were able to hash out some new tunes while they were all in the same room for the BlizzCon set…

Read this: The United States Of Metallica: The story of metal’s biggest band, one state at a time