Here, the clunky gated reverb becomes the music's most noticeable feature.Īs 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. 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. 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 anything, it only exposes the clenched and unnatural quality of the reverb that's applied to pretty much every instrument. But the new mastering job doesn't serve the main mix especially well. 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 today, bands put a lot of effort into getting this kind of loose, raw sound on purpose. Apparently, the conventional wisdom of the time dictated that this sound was too crude for public consumption.
In this more organic form, the music breathes more.
Classics like "Motorbreath" and "Hit the Lights" actually sound fuller, meatier, and more vital. 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.Īnd, though the rough mixes vary in quality, the more fully-developed songs provide a startling new perspective on the material. 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.
#METALLICA RIDE THE LIGHTNING VIDEO PLUS#
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. So if you already own this music, don't expect an improvement in sound quality. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. In other words, once Metallica stepped up the pace, everyone else followed suit. 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.īut 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. 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. 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. 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.
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