“Making a sandwich? Put it Down. This riff’s coming and you owe it money”- Christian Finnegan commenting on “Enter Sandman”
I was 11 years old and trying to pay attention to my homework with MTV on in the background. This was the era of glammed out hair metal, when you could be forgiven for confusing Vixen for Poison. I remember just stopping what I was doing and swiveling around to see what the hell was that. What started out as a somewhat mellow intro has just kicked into some super heavy shit. I mean heavy beyond anything I had heard at the time, being limited to commercial radio and MTV (this is pre-internet for those of you wondering) for my musical options. And what was up with this video- some guy, a quad amputee who can’t talk, tapping out “SOS” and “Kill Me” via morse code. This shit fucking scared me in a way that “Friday the 13th” hadn’t. As a kid in Reagan’s America, there was nobody talking about the costs of war on an individual level, never mind this existential examination of being locked up in your own skull due to one. After a few moments reflection, that last sentence is true in any era. Follow that up with black and white performance clips, where the band is in jeans and t-shirts without any evidence of Aqua Net being anywhere near the set. Way different than anything else out there at the time.
Flash forward a few decades and Sainted Wife (A huge Metallica fan though one probably wouldn’t guess that when meeting her) and I are up late flipping through the channels when we catch Metallica’s “Behind the Music” episode. That lead to us digging CDs out of boxes and waking the snoozing dogs up with some classics. I’ve become re-aquainted with their first 4 albums- “Kill ‘Em All”, “Ride the Lightening”, “Master of Puppets” and finally “…And Justice for All” over the last week. Depending on who you go fishing with, these albums aren’t “classic” camp selections, unless you are in a KOA, then game on, but they are still classics in their own right.
Debuting with “Kill ‘Em All”, the band lights off one of the first thrash metal albums. Showing the influence of both punk and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (especially Motorhead), cuts such as “The Four Horsemen”, “Hit the Lights”, “Seek and Destroy” and “Metal Militia” display both the ferocity of punk and the virtuosity of metal. The next album, “Ride the Lightening” expanded musically, and began to develop themes that would dominate the Hetfield’s lyrics as well as go beyond the typical “party all the time” ethos of 80s metal. “For Whom the Bell Tolls” prefigures “Disposable Heroes” and ”One”, while songs like “Fade to Black” address themes of alienation and isolation that were further developed in “Master of Puppets” and that speak to any pissed off 15 year old.
“Master of Puppets” just rocks. If you are going to get one Metallica album, get that one and crank that fucker.
I have to say, despite the impact that “One” had, and still has on me, I find “…And Justice For All”, the least satisfying of the bunch. I say that not because the songs are bad, but that they are overlong and could have used a little trimming, but that’s just me. Anyway, enjoy some videos
