Metallica Vs. Megadeth
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
There is a particular kind of exile
that doesn’t end when you succeed.
A door slams, and even when you build
an empire from the splinters,
you still hear the echo.
He was cut loose young—
talent burning too hot,
ego wrapped around injury like barbed wire.
So he did what the wounded brilliant always do:
he outperformed.
He built louder, faster, sharper.
He proved—relentlessly—that he could not be erased.
And the world applauded.
Stadiums filled.
Records sold.
History made room for his name.
But comparison is a parasite.
It feeds quietly.
It does not care how far you’ve come—
only where someone else stands.
Metallica became a constellation.
Untouchable.
Canonical.
Not because they were flawless,
but because they stopped looking sideways long enough
to become inevitable.
Megadeth was never small.
But it was always adjacent.
Always framed in opposition.
A life lived in the shadow of a door
that never needed to matter again.
For a long time, I was afraid
I would be Megadeth.
Afraid that no matter how much I built,
how hard I worked,
how loudly I proved myself,
I would still be measuring my worth
against someone else’s chart position.
So I did the unglamorous thing.
The dangerous thing.
The thing envy hates most.
I put on blinders.
I stopped watching.
Stopped tracking.
Stopped tallying other people’s wins
like they were losses assigned to me.
I turned inward—
toward discipline,
toward craft,
toward expansion so quiet it scared me.
And something shifted.
Because the truth is this:
Metallica didn’t win by being better.
They won by being themselves without apology,
without fixation,
without needing the mirror of comparison to exist.
Now, I don’t fear becoming second.
I don’t fear being outpaced.
I don’t fear someone else’s success
turning into my sentence.
I am not building in reaction anymore.
I am building in alignment.
I am growing,
and growing does not require witnesses.
I know who I am now.
I know what I’m doing.
I know the difference between hunger
and fixation.
And what I am—
what I have always been becoming—
was never Megadeth at all.
I am Metallica.
Not because I crushed anyone else—
but because I stopped listening
for the sound of doors closing
and started writing music
as if I was always meant
to fill the room.
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Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe:
