Instead of the standard melodic verse and heavy chorus – as evidenced on their previous ballads "Fade to Black", "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" and "One" – the band opted to reverse the dynamic, with heavy, distorted verses and a softer, melodic chorus, played with clean electric and acoustic guitars.

[2] Kirk Hammett said his solo was a last minute improvisation of "raw emotion" after the ideas he came with at the studio ended up not working.

The live version of "The Unforgiven" includes a second solo near the end of the song that the original recording did not have, although this part has rarely been played since the early 2000s.

The black-and-white video is themed around a barefoot and shirtless boy born in captivity who spends his life in a windowless stone room.

He blocks off the tunnel through which he crawled to access the cell using the square of stone he created when he made the window, then lies down to die.

The final scene shows the remaining piece of the wall turning into a woman, with the now older boy's hand still embedded in her back.

The song was not played in a live setting again for the next 17 years, until Metallica re-introduced it into the setlist for their 2015 European festival tours.

[29] Following its performance in Gelsenkirchen, Germany's Rock Im Revier festival, Metallica then included it in the setlists of their next three shows.

In an interview for MTV, James Hetfield said that the song is "continuation of the same storyline about sin and consequence, forgiveness and unforgiveness."

It was played for the first time in almost eight years in Lincoln, Nebraska, on September 6, 2018, and was next performed on the two nights of Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony's S&M2 at the Chase Center, albeit in an alternate form featuring only Hetfield and the orchestra.