Metallica

Published: 3 Sep 2024
Last updated: 7 Sep 2024

Kill ‘Em All

Kill 'Em All Album Cover

What an excellent debut! An album brimming with raw thrash and speed metal energy not found in any other Metallica album to date, and so has a unique position amongst the entire Metallica discography.

Its obvious that the members here are full of hunger, nothing to lose, everything to prove and well, in a genre as reliant as pure energy as thrash metal, it just works incredibly well. Sure, the actual specific sound and vocal stylings is old-school and derivative of peers, when its done so well and there is so much pure fun to be had, do you really need to care about such frivolities?

There’s an excellent set of tracks here, starting with a great 1-2 introductory punch on the album, with the super energetic Hit The Lights sweeping into the multi-part multifaceted The Four Horseman, the endlessly catchy Jump In The Fire, the beautiful interlude-y soundscape of (Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth (RIP Cliff Burton) which bridges across to the breakneck Whiplash - despite being the debut record, there’s not only a lot of high points, but some of Metallica’s best songs period show up here. The’s a part of me that wishes Metallica sounded like this for just a little more in their career, despite obviously going onto bigger and better things.

Now this relentless thrash energy does have some weaknesses, and thats simply that the genre can be pretty samey, with this album being no different. Tracks such as Motorbreath and Phantom Lord I could both take or leave, and others like Seek & Destroy and Metal Militia are good but don’t quite line up to some of the best offerings here, but given its fairly unique status, it really stand alone as a great Metallica record in its own right, not just “the album they released before Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets.

Best Tracks: Hit The Lights, The Four Horsemen, Jump In The Fire, (Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth, Whiplash

Ride the Lightning

Ride the Lightning Album Cover

Writing a review for this specific album is a little awkward to me, sitting in an awkward middle-ground. Its both superb in its own right, and a relative gigantic leap in maturity and songwriting from the pure immature thrashy Kill ‘Em All. Yet, the comparisons to the later Master of Puppets are inescapable (not in sound, but in album structure), and unfortunately in that comparison, it loses, if only just.

Regardless of any comparisons though, this still stands as another great 80’s Thrash album and some of the best Metallica tracks turn up on this 8-track offering. The initial 1-2 punch of Fight Fire With Fire into Ride the Lightning is excellent, For Whom The Bell Tolls is ominous and haunting, and the ending duo of Creeping Death into The Call of Ktulu makes for a big bombastic bookend to the album. Metallica have always been good at opening and closing their albums, and this is no exception.

But there are weaker tracks here that knock this down/prevent it from being the definitive Metallica album in my eyes: Trapped Under Ice, Fade to Black and Escape are all good, but not great, just like the production, which while thematically is cold, frigid and icy, doesn’t invite me all that much for continued re-listens.

Best Tracks: Fight Fire With Fire, Ride The Lightning, Creeping Death, The Call of Ktulu

Master of Puppets

Master of Puppets Album Cover

This truly is the best Metallica album, naysayers be damned. It was the greatest when I was a budding teenager dipping my toes into metal for the first time, and remains the greatest to this day. Who needs to rely on nostalgia when it can so clearly stand on its own merits, fusing the standard raw thrash aggression with multifaceted songs, oodles of great riffs and solos and enough bombast to make you believe the members of Metallica have produced a special album, and they’d be right.

The 8 tracks contained are realistically all winners here, which is no mean feat. The first half features a strong 1-2 punch of the hyperaggressive thrashy Battery into the epic of the title track, the dark brooding The Thing That Should Not Be into the somber Welcome Home (Sanitarium), while the second half picks up once again with another relentless thrasher in Disposable Heroes, chugs along with Leper Messiah, a big instrumental piece in Orion then ends on another excellent speedy note with Damage, Inc.

It also avoids all the pitfalls that have beset many Metallica albums, namely production and length. The album is warm, rich and beefy in sound and this makes it extremely inviting and rewarding to listen to - and the length, from an artist who has constantly been plagued with overfilling songs and albums to the point of excessive repetition, the relative tightness and conciseness is extremely refreshing. I’ll also give a nod to the lyrics and themes, which are definitely a cut above both a typical thrash album and Metallica albums as a whole.

Despite that, I’d caution against calling this a perfect album, and I have a few personal nitpicks: Disposable Heroes could be trimmed down a smidgen?, Leper Messiah is the weakest (if still very strong) track in the list, and Orion feels a little overly mid-paced and out of place, but these are complaints I have to dig deep on.

Regardless though, I’d say this is Metallica at their peak performance, and this album deserved to be canonised, both as a excellent Thrash Metal album, but also just an excellent album period.

Best tracks: Battery, Master of Puppets, The Thing That Should Not Be, Welcome Home (Sanitarium), Disposable Heroes, Damage, Inc.

…And Justice for All

...And Justice for All Album Cover

The last of Metallica’s 80’s releases, and quite frankly the weakest, in essentially every way. The songwriting, the production, the individual song quality are all quite rough here compared to their other 80s albums - and sure I’d say its the most technical and complex of them all and that certainly gives it some merit, I more see it as a “harbinger” of things to come, namely the post-80s Metallica tradition too-long albums with too-long songs with mediocre production, even if this album itself is not all too bad - and that’s a shame as with better mixing, some superfluous length trimmed here and there (e.g. on …And Justice for All, The Shortest Straw, The Frayed Ends of Sanity… honestly most tracks here), it could have been a great, more overtly technical thrash album (although if you want wonkily produced hyper technical thrash, go listen to like… Coroner or Watchtower). Unfortunately, with none of that, it comfortably sits as the “worst” good Metallica album.

But that negativity can only really go so far, because as much as I may criticise the production etc. it does give it a unique sound, dry and flat sure, but also claustrophobic which does sometimes fit these songs (even if the drumming, while appropriately technical and skillful, sounds pretty weak and annoyingly clicky) - and hey, an album featuring One can’t be that bad.

Favourite Tracks: Blackened, One, The Frayed Ends Of Sanity

Metallica (“The Black Album”)

Metallica ('The Black Album') Album Cover

My very first introduction to Metallica was this very album, and that’s no real surprise - this was Metallica’s big pop metal move and it sold absolutely tons of copies.

This album is the first album where Metallica shifted from their trademark relatively complex Thrash sound into something slower, softer, more straightforward yet simultaneously still heavy, interesting and still demonstrably Metallica. When put like this, its remarkable the album was as successful and as popular as it was, given this sounds like an impossible transition, nay, total re-invention. However, is the hype to believed?

Honestly, on the whole I really do believe it deserved the hype. Yes, its simpler, less complex and thrashy and is more pure “metal pop” with its straightforward, immaculately produced heaviness, but they really nail that sound. Tracks like Enter Sandman, Sad But True, The Unforgiven and Nothing Else Matters, sure they’ve been played to absolute death, but there’s a reason, the songwriting and performances are just so immaculately done, they’re catchy and instantly listenable, and so perfect to be played repeatedly on radio, on cd and personal mp3 players. In fact, the weakest tracks here are really the ones that don’t take that full leap, compromising with the older thrash sound, such as Holier Than Thou, Don’t Tread On Me and The Struggle Within, which indirectly really demonstrates how good the main pop metal core to this sound is.

This does mean that the album is overall somewhat uneven, and the fact that its so radio orientated means that while its achieved the goal its set out to do (hitting radio and selling tons of records, and getting the layman listener into metal), I really only respect and appreciate the album for what it represents (transcending its greatness with just raw influence, which is rare in a record) vs. actually listening to the record front-to-back, years and years after my first initial metal immersion, outside of some kind of nostalgia trip.

Best Tracks: Enter Sandman, Sad but True, The Unforgiven, Wherever I May Roam, Nothing Else Matters, The God That Failed

Load

Load Album Cover

Ugh, 90s Metallica really was just very tepid and boring, and this really was the first “bad” album released by them.

Its the logical evolution from Black, going further into hard/blues/southern rock and further away from their thrash roots. And sure, bands always have pressure to evolve because you risk being stale, but evolutions can always be artistically risky. Unfortunately, this sounds less like evolution and more like devolution, retreating into a tired sound with many many tepid boring cuts. It also is the dividing line to where all Metallica albums suffer from the same problems, not having enough ideas to carry its weightly length.

Now, there are still a few good tracks here, King Nothing kicks ass, Until It Sleeps is still a great ballad, and The Outlaw Torn makes an excellent closer - but everything else is either massively non-descript (e.g. 2x4, Hero of The Day, Wasting My Hate, Thorn Within), plain bad/embarrassing (Ain’t My Bitch, The House That Jack Built, Poor Twisted Me, Ronnie) or just totally out of place? (Mama Said), but there’s not enough highs, and plenty of lows or just plain boring moments that the album just smears into into sludge. Why didn’t they just condense down this and Reload into a manageable good-if-not-great album? Sigh.

Best Tracks: Until It Sleeps, King Nothing, The Outlaw Torn
Worst tracks: Ain’t My Bitch, Poor Twisted Me, Ronnie

Reload

Reload Album Cover

The 2nd half of Load, and another monstrous 75 minute helping of tepid hard rock. Uh, thanks guys? And it definitely sounds like it, coasting along at the middest of mid-pace, cruising along with the same apathetic energy that made Load dull as dishwater.

And yeah, it suffers basically the exact same problems that Load does, in the fact that its bloated, boring and dull, but I suppose when you have to fill two whole CDs to the brim from one period of songwriting, very little is going to be left on the cutting room floor. The one main distinguishing thing from Load is that is seems to be more uneven, more highs and yet simultaneously more lows, which… a little surprising? I would normally expect material written and recorded in one session and yet split across multiple albums to be heavily “front-loaded”, release the best stuff first, but maybe it does make more sense to conceive of this as a double-album that was designed to be consistent in quality, if so, they achieved it, two CDs worth of consistently mediocre quality.

With regards to this tracklist, I do enjoy the opener Fuel which has at least some energy to it, Where The Wild Things Are and Low Man’s Lyric are suprisingly both beautiful in their own way, and Fixxxer is yet another solid closer from the band, but the worst tracks are truly henious - the straight run from Better Than You to Bad Seed is more than enough to lose all faith in this album, not even mentioning Prince Charming, Attitude or the very fact a song titled The Unforgiven II has the line “Are you unforgiven too?” - truly awful.

And again, I’ll repeat with the “Why didn’t they condense this and Load into a single album?” - There have been plenty of people who have made their own Load+Reload tracklist, and I may make a stab myself at it, but the band should have done this themselves (and I don’t get the urge to listen to late-90s Metallica very often).

Best tracks: Fuel, Where The Wild Things Are, Low Man’s Lyric
Worst tracks: Better Than You, Slither, Carpe Diem Baby, Prince Charming, Attitude

St. Anger

St. Anger Album Cover

Hands down the worst Metallica album, and its not really even close.

Likely one of the most infamously bad albums of all time, a product of a highly dysfunctional band on the verge of collapse, and it very clearly sounds like that.

I could complain about the same things everyone has already complained about before, but my main observation is that this album is great proof of just how crippling an drought of artistic ideas can be, even for the biggest and most popular artists. Not only do you lack good ideas, you’ll cling to any ideas, no matter how bad, like you’d cling to a life-raft if stuck in the middle of the ocean.

Say what you want about modern Metallica releases, or even how badly they come across in the documentary detailing the creation of this album (which is pretty awful), I’m just glad Metallica are still together and not making music that sounds like this.

Best tracks: ???
Worst tracks: ???

Death Magnetic

Death Magnetic Album Cover

A return to form after the catastrophe that is St. Anger, right? Sort of. Its definitely an attempt to rekindle the flame, going back to the trademark thrash Metallica sound, but the raw ferocity, hunger and writing isn’t really all there, and given Metallica have been kicking around for ~25 years at this point, its not too suprising. It functions as an album, but it rarely elevates beyond that, and being the winner in the Loudness war does it very little favours in that regard.

There are some still decent ideas here even if perhaps recycled/re-inventing previous songs worse, but its still somewhat enjoyable, or at least there are sections (Metallica drag things out way too long here, The Judas Kiss is offender #1 for this) that are enjoyable, but these songs really don’t benefit from being this long nor having as many distinct sections, it all just feels tacked-on and long because, hey, thats what they used to do back in the 80s.

Its definitvely, in my eyes, the best album outside the obvious “big 5” - and while sure it doesn’t tread any new ground, Metallica experimenting outside of the Black Album is even worse, this is at least listenable with a few highlights. It just never elevates above that, and its honestly not all that interesting to talk about - almost the very definition of a 5/10 album.

Best tracks: Broken, Beat & Scarred, Cyanide
Worst tracks: The Judas Kiss, Suicide & Redemption, My Apocalypse

Hardwired…to Self-Destruct

Hardwired...to Self-Destruct Album Cover

Almost definitely the worst Metallica album outside of St. Anger - and this feels less like a bad thrash Metallica album and more like the 3rd helping of the Load/Reload era, mainly because everything sounds so non-descript and it all blends together after just 20 minutes of runtime.

Considering how little I liked the Load era to begin with, I can’t say I’m ever tempted to return to this anytime soon.

Take what little is good here, Moth Into Flame and Spit Out The Bone, and ditch everything else.

By the way, What an awful album cover.

Best tracks: Moth Into Flame, Spit Out The Bone
Worst tracks: Now That We’re Dead, Dream no More, Confusion, ManUNkind

72 Seasons

72 Seasons Album Cover

The most recent offering from Metallica, and its, well, about as good and as bad as a late era Metallica album I’d expect. It’s not great, nowhere near, but its not horrible.

It naturally shares a lot of the same issues that have plagued Metallica albums since the 90’s, and I have a few complaints about the drum presence in the mix (no one wants loud hi-hats), but overall I see the base level over the course of the album being just a smidge better than Hardwired. Sure it recycles and rehashes riffs, sections and ideas used on previous albums from their heyday, it feels like a celebration or a victory lap of an album, reminiscing and basking in past glories. While I’m not usually a fan of such obvious artistic self-cannibalisation, it feels genuine enough that I can somewhat look past it - there’s really no reason for Metallica to write, record and release a new album outside of the craft and opportunities to go touring once again.

I’m impressed Hetfield’s voice has lasted so well, its really a shame Metallica hasn’t taken a stab at another ballad or two.

I don’t forsee returning to this record anytime soon, and even then only for the few highlights here, namely the title track and Lux æterna.

Best tracks: 72 Seasons, Lux æterna
Worst tracks: Screaming Suicide, Sleepwalk My Life Away, You Must Burn!, If Darkness Had a Son