Metallica releases new whiskey aged on the sounds of heavy metal

"Rye The Lightning" is a new straight rye whiskey from Metallica's whiskey brand, BLACKENED. Named for and inspired by the band's sophomore album, which sold some six million copies, the whiskey was aged through BLACKENED's proprietary "Black Noise" process. Basically, they blast the barrels with the sonic strength of a live recording of Metallica performing "Ride The Lightning" in its entirety.

Here's the fancy marketing way they explain it:

We set out to craft a whiskey that brings the uniqueness of the collaborators together in a bottle. A whiskey born of innovation, and unlike any other in the world. From the time Dave was a cadet at West Point, he was fascinated with the effects of sound – the way an organ can play a note that shakes an entire building. As he honed his craft over the years, the thought of what sound could do to whiskey at a molecular level stayed with him. As it so happened, Metallica and Meyer Sound innovated a subwoofer employing that same range, harnessing the vibrations that make a Metallica concert the resonant, visceral experience their fans know and love. The convergence of these ambitions have resulted in a sonic-enhancement method that utilizes a variation of the band's song-determined frequencies to disrupt the whiskey inside the barrel, causing increased wood interaction that kicks up the wood-flavor characteristics in the whiskey. We call this proprietary sonic-enhancement process BLACK NOISE™.

Sure, okay.

It's not entirely clear how long the whiskey is subject to this sonic assault. According to Rolling Stone, the rye base is aged 5-8 years in traditional Kentucky whiskey barrels, then finished in Madeira wine and Caribbean rum casks for 2-14 weeks each. I'm guessing the Black Noise process only happens at the end there, where it's good for marketing.

According to the distiller, Rye the Lightning has, "notes of dried fig, hay, pinewood, pear, and rum cake on the nose, and on the palate, clover honey, mint, corn husk, sugar cane, walnut, and cinnamon."

It's $80, if you want to buy a bottle.

Metallica Unveil 'Rye the Lightning,' a Straight Rye Named After Iconic Sophomore Release [Tim Chan / Rolling Stone]

Image: Terence Faircloth / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)