Metallica to Grab 'Nobel Prize of Music'
American heavy metal band Metallica will be receiving Sweden's Polar Music Prize, which is annually given to one excellent contemporary musician and one excellent classical musician. Metallica is the first ever metal band to be awarded the prize.
Aside from the recognition, Metallica will be receiving £90,000 on Jun. 14 at a gala in Stockholm. According to BBC, the band has committed to donating their prize money to their charity, All Within My Hands. All Within My Hands is a foundation that supports workforce education, fights against hunger, and works for towards other local issues.
"It puts us in very distinguished company. It's a great validation of everything that Metallica have done over the last 35 years. At the same time, we feel like we're in our prime, with a lot of good years ahead of us," Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich said, told The Guardian.
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The judges applauded Metallica's strength in transforming their "sense of alienation into a superpower," according to The Guardian.
"Not since Wagner's emotional turmoil and Tchaikovsky's cannons has anyone created music that is so physical and furious, and yet still so accessible," the Polar Music Prize stated on their website. The Polar Music Prize also said that Metallica "has taken rock music to places it had never been before."
The band has been one of the most influential heavy metal bands of all time, and it is considered a part of the "big four" of thrash metal. Other bands in the "big four" are Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth.
To date, the band has sold over a hundred million records worldwide.
Other recipients of the Polar Music Prize were Paul McCartney in 1992, who was the first winner of the prize, Bob Dylan in 2000, Led Zeppelin in 2006, and Bjork in 2010. Last year's winners were Sting and Wayne Shorter, the former landing the contemporary musician category and the latter for the classical musician category.
