This is the closing track of Metallica's tenth album, Hardwired... to Self-Destruct. Colombian radio station Radioacktiva asked vocalist James Hetfield whether the "Hardwired... To Self-Destruct" title was inspired by how people are connected to each other through mobile devices and how everyone is becoming more dependent on technology. He replied: "That as well. Sure. The song 'Spit Out The Bone', which is getting rid of the human flesh part. And machinery is so much more efficient. And ourselves as people, [we're] very… I don't know… We want things quicker, we want the convenience of technology, but at what point is convenience leaning into dependency, and we need it, or else we don't know what to do."
The song's epic, dystopian music video was directed by Phil Mucci, who has previously worked with Korn, Disturbed and Stone Sour among others. "I was really nervous ever showing that to the band," Mucci admitted in a behind the scenes film. "I was nervous to show Metallica the rough cut of the video because it was terrifying. If I were them and I had read the treatment that promised all this really fun old school effects and puppets and robots and you get this green screen edit in which there's no robots, there's no puppets, there's nothing in it … so I waited until at least some of the pieces filled."
The song originally ran close to 10 minutes. Metallica realized they needed to trim it, making it leaner and thinner, more concise. Lars Ulrich told Rolling Stone: "That was just an adventure, man. I have versions of that song that are two to three minutes longer. We just kept going and going and going. That was also the first song where we went, 'Wait a minute, is there too much of a good thing here?' And then we started peeling it back. It was one of those where you just keep going to different universes and different modes and areas because it was super fun. It was like this journey. Old-school Mercyful Fate–type stuff was kind of the inspiration for that."
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