KILL 'EM ALL

If the 70's were the golden era for prog, then the 80's were the dark battleground for post-punk and metal. It makes both decades equally interesting to me. If I remember well, you had the choice to be totally un-cool or you could join either the Goth or the Metalhead legions in the 80's. A dissection that seems awkwardly irrelevant these days.

Things evolved rapidly in the 80's. Iron Maiden, leading force of British new wave of heavy metal, had started their career by injecting 70's hard-rock with a shot of punk-adrenaline. Three years later in their career, that punk spirit had faded and they had already started to embrace anthemic pop metal idioms by then. But already a new generation was eager to take over and prove that not only Motörhead had the right to stay true to the rebellious spirit of metal. In the California Bay area a new scene evolved, thrash metal: louder, more aggressive, faster, more vicious, darker and more uncompromising then music ever was before.

Iron Maiden remained an icon, especially for Metallica's prog evolution. But on this debut, it's mainly Motörhead's speed and roughness, Black Sabbath's evil tritone and Judas Priest's twin guitar attack that are stretched to their ultimate possibilities. The great improvement that the thrashers did on the NWOBHM was to make the punk aggression more prominent and to eschew entirely from commercialism and metal sing-alongs. At least, in the beginning they did.

Metallica's debut is a rollercoaster of raw and unpolished energy, it's an album that I love a lot more then just 3 stars, but within Metallica's entire discography, 3.5 stars fit suitably. I rarely play this album in its entity by the way. It's the kind of album I put on if I need a 10 minute shot of energy.