Metallica Lyrics Explained (That Was Just Your Life)

Greetings brethren and sistren of metal,
May the bell not toll for thee too soon.

My name is ASH and the objective of this blog is take a philosophical tour through the lyrics of Metallica. To decipher their meanings and deal with the issues they present. Metallica has come a long way lyrically since their first album Kill 'Em All in which they sang,

"Bang your head against the stage
Like you never did before
Make it ring Make it bleed
Make it really sore...
We will never quit
cause we are Metallica",

to the poetic metaphors of Death Magnetic such as:

"Set sail to sea but pulled off coarse
by the light of golden treasure".

A little in their early years but increasingly more as they matured, Metallica have addressed very real and deep issues that would be wise for us to look into ourselves like death, life, afterlife, the evil of man, insanity, internal struggles, the idea of a deity, why we choose to take life weather it be in capitol punishment or war, and so forth.
I would like to begin the unveiling (or apocalypse) of their lyrics (as far as I understand them) at the end. "That Was Just Your Life" is a song from their latest album, Death Magnetic. I will respect their copyrights and not reprint all the lyrics for this song so if you want to read them, buy the album.

"That Was Just Your Life" is about those times when you get a glimpse of how short your life is and how quickly it is coming to an end. Those glimpses could come when you survive a bad car accident or simply when you realize how old you have become so quickly.
Life is "like a raging river drowning when I only need a drink". When we are young and foolish, we see life as endless and full of potential so we step up to the river to take a sip and get caught up in it before we can help ourselves. When we get a little older, we may see things we hate in life and want to change or just kill all the bad things. But we realize it is not that easy because of how quickly life is going, "like a poison that I swallow but I want the world to die". We feel like we can't change things because we are caught on the conveyor belt to death with everyone and everything else.
I think the most potent part of the song is where it says: "I blind my eyes and try to force it all into place / I stitch them up / see not my fall from grace / I blind my eyes and feel it passing me by / I open just in time to say goodbye".
Mr. Hetfield seems to have grasped a revelation that there is something in this life that he would have to deal with if he didn't shut his eyes and ignore it. That something is his (our) fall from grace. This is reiterated toward the end when he says, "like a touch from hell to feel how hot it can get if I get caught / like a strike from heaven to reprieve / that brings you straight down to your knees". He realizes that time is ticking and he needs to choose heaven or hell. Something happened that was like a touch from hell or a strike from heaven. Something like that happens to all of us to wake us up. But we only have so long to wake up before we never wake up again.

"However many years a man may live,
let him enjoy them all.
But let him remember the days of darkness,
for they will be many.
Everything to come is meaningless."

That is not a Metallica lyric. It is from Ecclesiastes 11:8 in the bible. Solomon, the writer of the biblical poem, tells how he, in all his wealth, tried everything under the sun. He had power, money, he built things, helped people, tried to find fulfillment in drinking and other follies, filled his life with women and in the end decided that if you are going to blind your eyes to your fall from grace than you had better just try to enjoy life and not worry when some things seem futile because NOTHING comes to anything anyway. Everything is meaningless. But Solomon was wise and knew that embracing entropy and oblivion was stupid so he said later in the poem, "Remember your Creator
in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
and the years approach when you will say,
"I find no pleasure in them"-
Maybe Metallica has been your touch from hell to show you how hot it can be if you get caught or your strike from heaven to bring you to your knees. Don't wait too long to open your eyes. Jesus is the only way to deal with your fall from grace. Are you gonna get on your knees? Or blind your eyes and try to force it all into place?