Ride the Lightning / Kill 'Em All

Without belaboring the point, some albums change the course of music so profoundly that it's hard to imagine what the world was like before their arrival. Metallica's 1983 debut Kill 'Em All more or less singlehandedly launched thrash metal and established the template for every other speed- or extremity-oriented metal band on earth that's been active since. You can split hairs about the key role played by fellow ground-floor pioneers Slayer and Exodus, and point out that Anthrax and Voivod had also already formed by the time Kill 'Em All was released. You could even argue that other bands were bound to reach the same threshold of tempo and attack because the early-'80s metal underground was collectively headed in the same direction anyway—i.e: getting faster and heavier and building on the work of Motörhead, Venom, Mercyful Fate, and others.

But the fact is, several key participants in thrash metal's first wave freely admit that Kill 'Em All gave them a framework for the sound they had all been searching for. In other words, once Metallica stepped up the pace, everyone else followed suit. Listening back through modern ears, it's almost like revisiting those first three Ramones records—you know this music shaped the world you live in, but since so many artists have added extra levels of intensity since then, there's no way to re-create the sensation of how revolutionary the music was during its time. Today, the sequencing sounds a little more abrupt, and a surprising share of the riffs fall closer to traditional Maiden/Priest-level heavy than outright thrash. But of course, there are moments—the crunching chugga-chugga riffs that propel songs like "Whiplash," "Metal Militia," for instance—where Metallica's sense of purpose crystallized, and it's easy to see why the band became known as such a genre-defining force right out of the gate.

That said, the question here is whether there's any justification for re-releasing a title that, for metalheads, is as much a "required listening" staple as Led Zeppelin's first album is for fans of classic rock. It's not like the original pressing of Kill 'Em All suffered from a muddy mix or anything—dated, maybe, but not anything that could be significantly improved upon via remastering. So if you already own this music, don't expect an improvement in sound quality. And if you don't own it, you may be asking yourself: do I need to pay top dollar to get the album plus several hours' worth of previously unreleased extras? For neophytes and—unfortunately, even for dedicated fans—the answer is: probably not. At first, all the extras look tempting—several complete live shows, demos and rough mixes, the "Jump in the Fire" and "Whiplash" singles (both of which come with the same two live b-sides, which was unnecessary), and an hour-plus long interview with drummer and lead mouthpiece Lars Ulrich. If the infamous band biopic Some Kind of Monster makes you cringe at the thought of spending upwards of an hour with Ulrich talking in your ear, his Q&A actually sheds a good deal of light on the early days of the band.

And, though the rough mixes vary in quality, the more fully-developed songs provide a startling new perspective on the material. Classics like "Motorbreath" and "Hit the Lights" actually sound fuller, meatier, and more vital. In this more organic form, the music breathes more. Apparently, the conventional wisdom of the time dictated that this sound was too crude for public consumption. But today, bands put a lot of effort into getting this kind of loose, raw sound on purpose. Now, we finally get to see that perhaps the final Kill 'Em All mix that the public got was too constricted, which makes sense given this music demanded a new approach to production values that hadn't been invented yet. But the new mastering job doesn't serve the main mix especially well. If anything, it only exposes the clenched and unnatural quality of the reverb that's applied to pretty much every instrument. Any time a vocal or snare hit rings out (like when frontman James Hetfield screams "PESTILENCE" on "The Four Horsemen"), the echo tail abruptly closes shut. If you were used to listening to this album on a shitty cassette or in a car or a noisy work environment, you probably never noticed. Here, the clunky gated reverb becomes the music's most noticeable feature.

As for the live material, it would be charitable to call it "bootleg quality." Not to mention that multiple rounds of pretty much the same songs get old pretty quick. The one thing that fans might hone in on is the historical value of early performances of material from the band's next album, 1984's Ride the Lightning. A January '84 performance of "Fight Fire with Fire" even includes a few bars of the song's delicate, classical guitar/Randy Rhoads-influenced intro played for real. (Later live shows featured the de-rigueur prerecorded version.) It must've been exciting to be in the room—as the band played on gear loaned by Anthrax after a Boston robbery, Hetfield explains with good humor to the crowd—but listening back is more an act of archaeology than enjoyment. Sure, it's funny and you can practically picture the acne when Hetfield shouts "Come on, I want you to scream louder than the fuckin' PA!" to the crowd. But unfortunately, it's difficult to discern the rhythm-guitar interplay between Hetfield and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett. For a more useful document of the band's original two-guitar dynamic, you're better off going to the seminal demo No Life 'Til Leather, which features fellow thrash architect/future Megadeth leader Dave Mustaine. (Hammett only played leads on Metallica's first five albums.)

The thuggish lyrics on Kill 'Em All updated Motörhead's roaming-pirate vibe for a younger generation of brash American kids, as reflected in lines like "The show is through, the metal's gone / It's time to hit the road / Another town, another gig / Again we will explode" from the headbanging anthem "Whiplash." Fueled by hatred for L.A. hair metal and a pop mainstream that the band never could have dreamed would embrace it eight years later, Kill 'Em All raised a middle finger in the air while sounding a trumpet of unity for metalheads everywhere with its us-against-the-world mentality. Now, of course, its youthful persecution complex seems silly and sophomoric.

But in fact, that attitude seemed silly even by 1984, when Metallica released Ride the Lightning and pretty much left its youthful naivete behind for good. Yes, Hammett and late bassist Cliff Burton's fascination with comic books and Dungeons and Dragons-style fantasy rears its head on "The Call of Ktulu," but on Ride the Lightning the band no longer comes across like a street gang but like a group of frightened young men using their hellacious sound as a shield against life's unsettling realities.

Ride the Lightning addresses capital punishment, death, suicide, and nuclear annihilation—basically, the array of concerns that would become metal's standard lexicon. Musically, the album represents the moment where thrash intersected with prog, thus raising the bar on technicality, structure, chops, and ambition. Its combination of broadened perspective and elevated musicianship arguably mark it as the point where metal as a whole graduated from goofy adolescent expression to an artform that could speak to thinking adults and nourish listeners long after they grew out of its primary demographic age group. In short, Ride the Lightning is the moment where metal developed a worldview. After Ride the Lightning, thrash turned into an arms race of ever-increasing technical proficiency.

Again, though, did an album of such iconic stature that has gone multiplatinum even warrant a deluxe repackaging? This new expanded edition out-does the Kill 'Em All reissue with more live shows (including a 1985 Castle Donington appearance), the whole album's worth of demos and rough mixes and even more audio interviews, this time featuring Burton and Hammett. Again, though, the quality of the live recordings is spotty at best. The band trainwrecks right from note one, for example, on a March '85 rendition of "Fight Fire with Fire." There's a fine line between warts-and-all charm and embarrassing fiasco that should stay in the vault, and this collection all too often leans more toward the latter. Even in cases where Metallica's formidable live chops come across, the sound quality leaves a lot to be desired. You have to think that if better-quality recordings existed from this time period, the band would have gotten its hands on them and released those instead.

There's no denying the incalculable impact of either of these albums, and it certainly doesn't hurt to have an excuse to pull them off the shelf again. And sure, obsessive completist/collector types will find a lot to sink their teeth into here. But for pretty much anyone else, other than the demos and rough mixes, these sets offer quantity over quality. Not to mention that it's irritating and confusing to navigate the difference in content between the vinyl, cd, and ultra-deluxe sets. Even the fairly dedicated fans who'd enjoy tracing Metallica's development as a live act during these two key stages will likely be disappointed here and are advised to steer clear and try YouTube instead.