Kirk Hammett and Rob Trujillo celebrate Halloween with a hard-rocking cover of The Edgar Winter Group's Frankenstein

Metallica's Kirk Hammett and Rob Trujillo have recorded a hard-rocking cover of The Edgar Winter Group's Frankenstein to celebrate Halloween.

Posted to the YouTube account of Blackened American Whiskey – Metallica's own whiskey brand – the video sees the pair of 'Tallica string-slingers reinvent the classic instrumental – taken from The Edgar Winter Group's 1972 album They Only Come Out at Night – with a more hard-rock vibe, as Hammett offers up a bountiful supply of distorted electric guitars riffs and attitude-y leads on his 'Greeny' Les Paul.

Both pay careful attention to their visuals of their performances: Hammett quite literally rides the lightning in a Frankenstein sweatshirt, plays in front of a painting of Frankenstein, and places a Frankenstein bust beside his Vox practice amp, while Trujillo plays in front of a wall of horror-themed masks.

We're sure Kirk Hammett jumped at the chance to record a Halloween-themed cover; the guitarist has made clear his love of all things scary, often adorning his signature guitars with horror imagery – like his ESP Ouija, KH Demonology and White Zombie-themed KH-WZ.

He's also built a reputation as an obsessive collector of vintage horror memorabilia, and even put on his own horror convention – Kirk Von Hammett's Fear FestEvil – back in 2014.

“Heavy metal and horror are cousins,” the guitarist told NBC Bay Area after the convention. “There's a lot of horror elements that have been used in heavy metal for a long time. I mean, Black Sabbath was named after a movie.”

He continued: “I was a horror fan and then I became a music fan and then I discovered hard rock and heavy metal, and I'd see all these little pieces of imagery, song titles and lyrics borrowed from horror films throughout all these heavy metal bands. They're made up of the same ingredients.

“For me, a good horror movie is fun, dynamic, exciting to watch, [with] peaks and valleys. A good heavy metal song, for me, is the same way – exciting to listen to, [has] peaks and valleys, really fun and energetic.”

The beginning of the video features a close-up shot of a bottle of Blackened x Willett, Blackened American Whiskey's collaboration with Kentucky's Willett Distillery. The batch of whiskey has undergone Blackened's proprietary Black Noise sonic enhancement process, infusing it with the sound waves of 11 classic Metallica tracks, including For Whom the Bell Tolls, One and Welcome Home (Sanitarium).