The new reveal trailer for Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 contains a bizarre start-stop industrial remix of Metallica’s Master Of Puppets.
The announcement for the next entry in videogame publisher Activision’s long-running first-person shooter series dropped on Tuesday (August 19), and it’s scored by a quasi-futuristic reimagining of the title track from the thrash metal masters’ 1986 album, intended to reflect the game’s setting of 2035.
Watch below.
Since its release, the trailer has been derided by fans of the series, currently having 110,000 ‘dislikes’ on YouTube against 30,000 ‘likes’. Users in the video’s comment section are criticising the series for straying from Call Of Duty’s initial World War II-era setting and “gritty” tone, with many comparing the preview negatively to teasers for upcoming rival game Battlefield 6.
“This actually made me pre-order Battlefield 6,” reads the top comment, with 39,000 ‘likes’.
“EA is probably going to throw a giant party tonight,” adds another user, referring to the Battlefield series’ publisher, Electronic Arts.
Black Ops 7 follows last year’s Black Ops 6 but will be a narrative sequel to 2012’s Black Ops II. It comes out on November 14 and pre-orders are now live.
Master Of Puppets has been something of a mainstream fixture in recent years, following its inclusion in a pivotal scene in the season finale of Stranger Things series four in 2022. The sequence depicted character Eddie Munson playing the song on guitar as the sci-fi/horror show’s protagonists battled the villainous Vekna, and the track entered global charts for the first time in decades in the wake of the broadcast.
Metallica are gearing up to play one of the most intimate shows of their career, set to take place at the 250-capacity Stephen Talkhouse in Long Island, New York next Thursday (August 28). The hyper-exclusive concert is being held to celebrate the launch of the band’s new SiriusXM radio channel, Maximum Metallica, and audio of it will be broadcast on the channel from September 1.
At the same time, the band are at the centre of rumours that they’re preparing for a residency at Las Vegas’ multimedia venue the Sphere. Drummer Lars Ulrich neither confirmed nor denied the reports during an interview with Howard Stern, but bassist Robert Trujillo told the DJ last week that he’s already imagining what the shows will look like.
“I’m already thinking like, imagine this, imagine that, imagine, you know, because Metallica’s music is so visual,” he said. “I mean, imagine a song like [1986 instrumental] Orion and what you can do with that, you know what I mean? The possibilities are endless.”
Metallica are touring Australia, New Zealand and select Asian markets later this year and will play across Europe in summer 2026.
