Kirk Hammett says that he would like to see METALLICA perform its Ronnie James Dio medley live at an upcoming concert.

METALLICA's "Ronnie Rising Medley" consisted of four Dio-era RAINBOW songs ("A Light In The Black", "Tarot Woman", "Stargazer" and "Kill The King") and was included on the 2014 charity tribute album "Ronnie James Dio - This Is Your Life". "Ronnie Rising Medley" later also appeared on the deluxe edition of METALLICA's latest studio album, "Hardwired… To Self-Destruct".

Hammett and the other members of METALLICA were asked to name their favorite cover song to play live in a fan question-and-answer session in the latest issue of U.K.'s Kerrang! magazine. The guitarist replied: "Well, [MISFITS'] 'Last Caress' is just one of those songs, man. It's just so quick and to the point. I love a lot of the covers we do.

"One thing that I would like to do live one of these days is the Dio/RAINBOW medley. I think that'd be fucking incredible to do that live sometime because I'm a big Dio fan, I'm a big RAINBOW fan."

Back in 2014, METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich told Rolling Stone that covering RAINBOW's classic material was a no-brainer. "[Dio's] music is so much a part of what's in METALLICA's DNA, the harder, edgier, blues-based hard rock from the seventies," he explained. "It was fairly effortless to put this together, because it's something that we were all reared on. I don't recall sitting there in a band meeting or anything deciding what to play. Somebody starts playing 'Stargazer' — which is sort of just like something that's in our arsenal to jam — and then that whole period there, 'Tarot Woman', 'Kill The King', 'A Light In The Black' — that's just really effortless to jump into."

Other songs that METALLICA has covered in the past include DIAMOND HEAD's "Am I Evil?", BUDGIE's "Breadfan", QUEEN's "Stone Cold Crazy" and DEEP PURPLE's "When A Blind Man Cries".