Feb 17

Feb 17 Metallica - Ride The Lightning

Metallica
Ride The Lightning
Release Date: July 27, 1984
Label: Megaforce

Review by Jared Stossel

A year on the road in support of the Kill ‘Em All album did a lot for Metallica. They ingratiated themselves within the burgeoning metal scene up in the San Francisco Bay Area, cutting their teeth with show after show at countless venues – most of which no longer exist. The release of songs like “Whiplash”, a high-speed onslaught of chugging guitar riffs and mosh-pit inducing drums, led to the band being coined as the originators of thrash metal”, a genre that came as a response to both the minimalist punk movement and the glammed-up hair metal scene dominating Southern California. While Metallica was enjoying this newfound notoriety, they couldn’t help but want to push themselves further apart from the other acts that were coming up. They started one genre, but they wanted to continue to elevate it further. After nearly six weeks of recording in Copenhagen during the winter of 1984 with engineer Flemming Rasmussen, Metallica emerged with their response to the ambitious but not quite perfect Kill ‘Em All.

Ride The Lightning defies the idea of a sophomore slump, accredited to most bands that can’t quite live up to the success of their first effort. While Lightning is still far from perfect, it is miles ahead of the work they presented on their debut, showcasing their expanding musicality and desire to make sweeping opuses that stretched far beyond the thrash music they had planted the roots of only a year earlier. There are only eight tracks on Ride The Lightning, yet the full album clocks in around forty-seven minutes. Not entirely thrilled with the way the hand that producer Paul Curcio played in the making of Kill ‘Em All, the band opted to act as their producers, recruiting Flemming Rasmussen as more of an engineer and assistant. This tactic would play to their detriment in years to come – but not on Lightning or their follow-up Master of Puppets. At this moment, Metallica was more focused than ever on becoming not just a great metal band, but the biggest metal band in the world with Ride The Lightning.

One of the most notable differences in composition happens right off the bat, with an acoustic guitar intro that leads into the punishing “Fight Fire With Fire”. Several moments found the band slowing down on Lightning, and it worked great to their advantage, whether it be acoustic plucking on “Fire” or the clean-guitar-reverb-tinged opening of “Fade To Black”. These slower moments make the heavy metal barrage that follows that much more impactful; Kill ‘Em All had grit, but Ride The Lightning harnesses power before unheard of. These moments of calm began to lay the groundwork for the composition style that the band would develop for subsequent albums – it found them expanding beyond what people expected of them, and Lightning was a moment captured in time that began to showcase what the genre was truly capable of.

There are two reasons why this seems to be the case: 1) the presence of Dave Mustaine’s material is largely absent, only receiving songwriting credit on the album’s title track and the epic instrumental conclusion “The Call of Ktulu”; and 2) the inclusion of writing from guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Cliff Burton. Many credit Burton with bringing a strong sense of music theory and understanding to the band, and that shines throughout the material that comprises the eight songs on Lightning. To this day, it still features some of Metallica’s most iconic riffs; the openings of “Ride The Lightning”, “For Whom The Bell Tolls” and “Fade To Black” can still inspire crowds to lose their collective minds.

Lyrically, vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield was starting to come into his own around the time of Lightning’s recording. He had begun to embrace the frontman role, and while his vocal abilities would still reside in a higher, screeching register, you see the beginning of one of rock’s greatest vocalists starting to develop. The cheesiness of lyricism that made up most of Kill ‘Em All was beginning to dissipate, while still pulling from the well of darker topics; “Ride The Lightning” is a phrase that quite literally means “dying by the electric chair”, and the album’s eponymous track speaks from the point of view of a death row inmate. “For Whom The Bell Tolls” reflects on Hemmingway’s novel of the same name, speaking on the atrocities of war that are outlined throughout the book (war is a topic that has come up often in Metallica’s collective discography). “Fade To Black” marked the band’s first ballad, with themes touching on the topic of suicidal ideation, one of the band’s more serious numbers. While this might have alienated some, it showed a band with a lyricist that wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable about his inner mind and the mental health issues that plague us all.

The guitar riff of the album’s lead single, “Creeping Death”, was written by Hammett when he was sixteen. After being played under the name “Die By His Hand” in the guitarist’s previous band Exodus, it eventually made its way over to Metallica, lyrically inspired by the Charlton Heston-led film The Ten Commandments. Despite taking years to officially come together as “Creeping Death”, it marked an extraordinary entry in the band’s catalog, making it clear that their songwriting and lyrical capabilities were to be watched and not thrown in with everyone else. “Trapped Under Ice”, one of the album’s other thrash-inducing moments, would also pull from the lyrically strange and unusual, speaking of a man who wakes from a cryogenic state to a world where no one can hear him. It leads into “Escape”, one of the shortest tracks on the album and one of the band’s first attempts at what most would dub “radio-friendly” material. Again – Ride The Lightning scratches the surface of what Metallica is, even if it’s not perfect. “Escape” is nowhere near a perfect entry in the band’s catalog, but it shows that they were willing to take a swing at things outside of their comfort zone; this kind of sound wouldn’t be perfected until the beginning of the 1990s, with a producer named Bob Rock – but more on that later.

Lightning closes with “The Call of Ktulu”, a nearly nine-minute instrumental metal oeuvre that finds the band encompassing all of the techniques they showcased throughout the album in one sitting. At moments, it feels like the band is just putting in riffs for riff's sake, but there is a desire that is burning through the master tapes of Ride The Lightning that shows a band developing on all fronts. In just a few years' time, they would become masters of the genre.