Metallica – Ride the Lightning

A lot has been said, written and documented about this album and deservedly so this is a masterpiece the defining moment of an era. If there is a band that introduced me to metal it is Metallica so it will be a shame if this "metal blog" don't have an article about it. On that note here is a review that no one asked for, let the wheels of redundancy turn for one more time.

If you are a newbie and don't know where to start on heavy metal, this might be your gateway drug. 

There is one factor that differentiated Metallica from other Trash Metal bands from the era, the ability to write "hooks". You can be all evil, technical and brutal but unless you provide hooks it will never stay with the listener. It was those hooky songwriting that made the last Behemoth record awesome. This album has chock-full of them, every song here is memorable but I have to start some where.

" Take a look to the sky just before you die

It's the last time you will.

Blackened roar massive roar fills the crumbling sky

shattered goal fills his soul with a ruthless sky.

Stranger now are his eyes to this mystery

he hears the silence so loud.

Crack of dawn, all is gone except the will to be

now they see what will be, blinded eyes to see. "  

The above lyric is from For Whom the Bell Tolls the album's third song, a song more famous for Cliff Burton's bass solo at start. A song inspired form the novel of the same name, the lyrics discusses the plight of warfare and the protagonist's eventual fall. Add to that a bell intro, a chromatic palm muted riff and a sing along chorus, you have a classic.

Cliff Burton

The song leads to the first Metallica ballad Fade to Black. Everything about the song is sad, the lyrics are suicidal, the opening acoustic guitar invokes a melancholy that you don't normally associate with a trash metal band, even the outro guitar solo gives you no hope. The last line of the song is a thing of beauty.

"...Yesterday seems as though it never existed

death greets me warm, now I will just say goodbye"

I am going to skip some songs because our time is finite (not because they are unworthy) and jump right into Creeping Death, one of the greatest songs ever written. If there is a song that best  embodies what heavy metal is all about it's Creeping Death. Everything about this song is metal, the title, the lyrics, the riffs, the "die, die, die..." part in the bridge and the guitar solo. The song is based on the book of Exodus from The Bible about the plague of death of the first born, the lyrics are from the angle of death's perceptive.

"...I rule the midnight air

the destroyer.

Born, I shall soon be there,

deadly mass.  

I creep the steps and floor

final darkness.

Blood lambs painted door

I shall pass"

Keeping with the Egyptian theme the song features a cool oriental sounding riff during the "Die, Die, .." chant and thats the part where crowd participation comes up. Imagine around ten thousand people screaming "Die" and suddenly out of nowhere James Hetfield screams 

"Die by my hand

I creep across the land

killing first born men"   

I could go on writing like this for the other songs like Fight Fire with Fire, the title song and the epic instrumental The Call of Ktulu, but I don't want to lose a potential reader by writing a long post.

This album is a heavy metal monolith, an album that is equally diverse and heavy. It's perfectly structured, starting with a quick-fire song with a change of pace to slower tempos in For Whom the Bell Tolls to a ballad in Fade to Black and closing out with an epic 9 minute instrumental. The songs play well as an album while retaining their own distinctive flavor.         

For many their next album, Master of Puppets is considered their best and I won't argue with them, in fact the first 4 Metallica albums are absolutely essential. However Ride the Lightning is and will forever will be my favorite Metallica album. It captures the zeitgeist of the 1980s trash metal and even after 34 years not many have come even close to it.