Check Your Blind Spots: Week Four
The cliché for most of these “Check Your Blind Spots” entries is that the artist in question was someone I just missed out on due to my age or simply refused to embrace due to some bulshitty backlash of my own creation.
Metallica is a bit of both. Metallica’s fourth album, …And Justice For All came out when I was six, several years before something like metal would be a viable genre to listen to (at the time, my idea of metal was “Ballroom Blitz” – close, but not quite). By the time I was of age (let’s say 14 or 15), pop punk was my drug of choice and Metallica (circa Garage Inc.) was considered to be the enemy. That’s not to say that I wasn’t exposed to Metallica at the time, but they were a band associated with a certain kind of person in my town and I tried to keep my encounters with those dirtstach’d and mulleted heshers to a minimum. No one wants to have his bike stolen, especially by some skinny burnout in an AC/DC tour shirt.
I had a serious superiority complex when it came to Metallica. When I would see them mentioned in Spin, I would wonder why the heck a cool magazine like that would devote any print to such mooks. Over time, that hatred only got worse as James Hetfield began barking at the end of every line in every song (their cover of “Whiskey In A Jar” is one of the greatest travesties of mankind) and Lars Ulrich got into that whole Napster mess. Up until now, Metallica has been persona non grata to me.
But that doesn’t mean that metal itself was the enemy. My favorite punk bands at the time tied in some metal chops (Strung Out, NoFX), and in high school I soon discovered Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden (and the equally great, but less brooding Van Halen and Guns N’ Roses). By university, I latched onto a few current metal bands like ISIS, Mastodon and System Of A Down, but I really wasn’t interested in too much of a history lesson, especially not one that concerned Metallica.
But wouldn’t you know it, the band’s name kept coming up as a reference point to some of my favourite bands. I would hear people more knowledgeable about metal than I speak in hushed tones about Metallica’s first four albums (less so everything after that, but I’ll have to make that decision for myself). Perhaps, I began thinking to myself, there was a greater divide between the Metallica I thought I hated and the Metallica that actually existed.
Turns out I was just being an elitist dick. Those four albums slay – and when they fall short of totally slaying (which they occasionally do), they sound like a band that is very close to slaying. Combining intricately constructed riffs, thrash metal speeds and just the right doses of pretension, Metallica’s first four albums are really the blueprint for all forms of progressive metal.
Beginning with 1983’s Kill ‘Em All, you can hear Metallica’s career hitting the ground running at a breakneck pace. Of the first four albums, however, Kill ‘Em All is the only album that has that “you had to be there” feel. It’s considered to be the first thrash album to come out of the gates and the whole thing is a tight and proficient mix of New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and more punk-inspired brits like Motorhead, but Kill ‘Em All is the one album that sounds more like it was inspired by Metallica rather than being the real thing. I’m sure the album was a revelation when it was released (and I’m sure it would have fared slightly better had I not listened to Master of Puppets first), but it only hints at where the band could really go. The fact that the production is tinny and weak doesn’t help either (this problem persists to a lesser degree on all these albums). While Metallica sound like a band that has all the pieces to be great, they’re still trying to put it all together on the first album.
The album is far from bad – it’s quite good actually – it’s just that the band had yet to fully blossom. “The Four Horseman” sees the band stretching out (at seven minutes, it’s the longest song on the album) with its epic halftime bridge, monster gallop and greater melodic foothold; “Motorbreath’s” post-chorus build up shows the band as more dynamic than many of their heroes and peers; “(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth” proves the Cliff Burton’s death was a true musical loss and not just a pointless death from a faceless member of a heavy metal rhythm section; and the one-two punch of “Seek & Destroy” and “Metal Militia” give a clear indication of what the band was truly capable of (although much of “Seek & Destroy” seems a little too blandly mid-tempo for me). Throughout it all, it’s James Hetfield’s machine gun rhythm guitar that steals the show, making each song a showcase in musical prowess and sheer physical endurance. It’s through Hetfield’s playing that you can hear why Metallica became a hit so immediately. Still, though, the parts all add up to what resembles a mere warm-up when compared to what was to come.
If Kill ‘Em All is potential shown, 1984’s Ride The Lightning is potential realized and frequently exceeded. What a mighty, awesome and timeless album this is. From front to back, Lightning hits harder, faster and fiercer than its predecessor. It also shows a ton of smarts too (an intelligence that, had you asked me even a year ago, I wouldn’t have thought possible with Metallica). The quickest indication of the band’s impressive lunge forward can be heard in the opening Spanish-influenced refrain of “Fight Fire With Fire.” This morsel of genre mixing hardly sounds like it would have even been considered for Kill ‘Em All, but it also doesn’t sound like something that any other metal bands of the time would attempt either. Metallica, however, were too technically proficient to be limited by thrash. Of course, the Spanish intro gives way to roughly four minutes of Hetfield’s insanely quick staccato riffage and Ulrich’s rapid fire percussion, but the song is still too dynamic to be mere thrash – the half time swing of the chorus makes this a great song to repeat. Lyrically, the band covers pretty well-worn territory for the metal community – madness, isolation, nuclear holocausts and the like – but the riffs, solos and sheer pummeling brutality of it all are too technically impressive to ever get lumped in with anything run-of-the mill.
As a quick interjection, my greatest fear going into these four albums was James Hetfield, whose affected bark has been one of my least favourite sounds for the past decade. Luckily, on these four records, Hetfield has yet to fully develop every aggravating peccadillo. Part of that is because he’s still trying to find his voice (on Kill ‘Em All, he especially sounds young and tinny), but for the most part he finds a perfect groove of aggressive melodicism.
After a staggering start, Ride The Lightning could be forgiven for letting up, but the album just knocks out hit (the technical mastery of the title track) after hit (the brooding and super cool “For Whom The Bell Tolls”) after hit (the thrash epic “Trapped Under Ice”). Ride The Lightning also gives a peek at the influencee the New Wave of British Heavy Metal had on the band as “Escape” and “Creeping Death” both recall the group-sing anthems of Iron Maiden. Of course, the album’s centerpiece and greatest artistic leap forward is “Fade To Black,” which sees the band move to full-on power ballad mode without sacrificing an ounce of power. It’s a great song and probably the key moment where I began to understand how Metallica were able to crossover so seamlessly. Most of Metallica’s songs show the band as unbelievable players, but “Fade To Black” shows that they can succeed on a grander scale than their chosen genre. It’s a song that could and should easily satisfy both hardcore metal fans and straight up rock fans alike. With Ride The Lightning, Metallica found a way to do right by everybody, especially themselves. It’s really a terrific album.
While 1986’s Master Of Puppets isn’t quite the staggering leap forward in ambition, production and execution that Ride The Lightning was, it’s undeniably a masterpiece of technical aggression and, of the first four albums, the best of the lot. Following a nearly identical template of its predecessor (seriously, on an almost song-for-song basis, Master Of Puppets mirrors Ride The Lightning), Master Of Puppets catches the band at their peak powers. While everything seemed to come together on Ride The Lightning, that inspiration and ambition level only seems to strengthen here, as the band let songs stretch out to greater lengths (like the epic title track, which seems to change time signatures every minute for eight-and-a-half minutes), let songs build with more patience (“Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” which creeps along with a minor key arpeggio that was directly ripped off for “Undone (The Sweater Song)”) and thrashes with more technical virtuosity than a million math rock bands (“Disposable Heroes,” an eight minute jolt of speed and rage, let loose in a multitude of sections and motifs).
The essential “Battery” starts the album almost identically to Lightning’s “Fight Fire With Fire” with an acoustic intro that resembles the work of Ennio Morricone by more than just a bit. It’s as if Metallica is inviting the listener to a gun fight, but once the hyper-compressed distortion kicks in, it becomes apparent that the band’s packing Uzis. “Battery” is the best of angry, epic, ratatat thrash metal, condensed into five minutes, the most bite-sized chunk on the whole album. This was the first song I heard of the four albums and it was certainly a game changer. As soon as the distorted guitars fire away with that big, cinematic riff, I knew that I had been wrong about Metallica. The song seethes like punk, but moves like a sheer force of evil, with fire-breathing solos, sweat-inducing tempos and a cool, swinging bridge that makes me want to launch into that slow mosh that takes most concert from the realm of memorable to truly life-changing.
And through it all, my favorite song might still be “Damage, Inc.,” the album closing thrasher that’s less worried about ambition and pretension and more focused on pummeling the shit out of the listeners’ ears with guitarists Hetfield and Kirk Hammett’s hyperspeed palm mutes. The song doesn’t quite boast the hooks and highly considered nature of the previous seven tracks (although it’s far from dumbed down), but what it lacks in grandeur it more than makes up in wild-eyed velocity. Over it’s eight songs, Master Of Puppets shows that Metallica once held on to that sweet spot that only a few metal bands have ever attained – the fine line between heady song composition, tonal legitimacy (although their lyrics peddle in all sorts of metal clichés, they’re never laughable) and visceral immediacy. Master Of Puppets is like a collection of the fastest, smartest and most brutal metal songs ever concocted. It might be the best metal album ever made.
With 1988’s …And Justice For All, it’s obvious that Metallica are trying to up the ante even more, with song lengths getting longer and the instrumental prowess becoming tougher and tougher (in fact, apparently Metallica scaled things back considerably for their next album because they couldn’t recreate any of …And Justice For All’s tracks live). The songs themselves are impressive, and the ambition and expertise are both immediately apparent, but there are a couple of problems. The first problem is that the songs are so ambitious and “technically impressive” that they’re better suited for “appreciation” than “enjoyment.” Certain songs simply lack that immediate power that even some of the songs on Kill ‘Em All boasted. While I do actually quite enjoy this album (I’d rank it as my third favorite), it could be easily seen as bloated and even unfocused – more impressed with its own virtuosity than any connection it could have with an audience (eseentially the issues that plagued much prog rock and the most recent, still-pretty-damn-good Mastodon album). Some of these songs had me looking at my watch.
The second problem is more serious since it likely plays into my first issue with the album: it sounds crappy. Maybe it’s just my iPod, or my computer speakers, but …And Justice For All is tinny, feeble and impotent in the production department. Hell, I can’t even hear the bass (a less than auspicious debut for Jason Newsted, replacing the dearly departed Cliff Burton). While deliberately sounding like shit is an aesthetic choice for many indie bands in this day and age, weak production has never found a way to benefit heavy metal, a genre that really requires a strong mix. The guitars are murky, the drums lack oomph and the bass is non-existent; this is hardly a recipe for success.
Which is why the fact that …And Justice For All is still pretty damn great is quite a miracle indeed. Sent out into the world with such obvious deficiencies, …And Justice For All truly has to fight for its space on your playlist. But fight it does. In spite of everything – the weak production, the over-ambitious compositions – I still really enjoy listening to this album. It helps that the album opens with “Blackened,” which is as good as any of the classic tracks. In fact, the album’s first half is really a wonder, with the immortal “One” holding ground, recalling “Fade To Black” and “Welcome Home” with its minor key arpeggios and slow build to a pulverizing close. A paean to suicide (“Try, try, try again / head first this time / dive right in” – oh wait, wrong band), “One” is one of those inescapable metal classics that benefits more from hearing them in the context of what came before than what came after. Hetfield’s fake-aggro bark is starting to come into play here, but the gentle flourishes and militaristic finish are too good to deny.
While the album lacks the fury and the force of Master Of Puppets, there is so much here that …And Justice For All never feels like a letdown. Had the album had any kind of low end, there likely wouldn’t be any talk of faults for the album.
So I guess apologies are in order: to all the burn-outs and heshers I knew in junior high and high school – you were right, Metallica does fucking own. While I don’t think that I will be needing to venture into St. Anger territory (although a viewing of Some Kind Of Monster might be in order) I can now understand the devotion and, at least to some degree, feel like a new convert. These four albums are really a Holy Grail of sorts. While it’s embarrassing to have discovered Metallica’s genius retroactively (Mastodon, for one, likely wouldn’t exist without Master Of Puppets and …And Justice For All), I couldn’t imagine myself being more satisfied with this discovery. I’ve just found four new albums that have forever ingrained themselves into my daily rotation.