By Garrick Hoffman and
Patrick Doyle
Liberal Arts & Liberal Arts –
English Majors

Album of the Issue: Ride The Lightning

On July 27th of last year, Metallica’s Ride The Lightning turned 30. It’s still one of their most celebrated albums and it boasts such legendary songs as “For Whom The Bells” and “Fade To Black.”

Garrick’s take:

Fight Fire With Fire: RTL’s first song begins with an acoustic intro to wet our whistles, and then almost capriciously erupts into a fury of trashing and headbanging music. It’s an aggressive opener, and I love that one part where Lars’s stretch of double bass gallops over the sustained guitar. We catch our breath from the riffs in this moment, but the double bass keeps our heart galloping with it.
Ride The Lightning: “Ride” starts strong with a simple but catchy and equally haunting riff, like we’re about to storm a castle with hellfire and brimstone. Unfortunately the song is taken into a disappointing direction, as we’re taken to the Land of Mediocrity. The music – mostly the guitar – sounds uninspired. What the song mostly has going for it, however, is relevance. “Ride The Lightning”…Texas, anyone?
For Whom The Bell Tolls: A legendary song that sounds like what UFC fighter Chuck Liddell listens to while he pumps himself up in the locker room before entering the ring. It’s also one of my favorite songs. The riffs are simple, but have a supremely badass and pugnacious weight to them. That first post-chorus riff gives my fancy a good tickle.
Fade To Black: No doubt one of my favorite RTL tracks, but one of my favorite in Metallica’s catalogue. Although the song is primarily melody-driven and even a bit soulful – described as a “power ballad, in fact – “Fade” turns into this high-velocity riff fest. Both the music and the lyrics have a morose feel to them, with the lyrics touching upon depression and thoughts of suicide: “Life it seems will fade away…I have lost the will to live…need the end to set me free.” The solo at the end, though still maintaining the Metallica shred, is both beautiful and technically impressive.
Trapped Under Ice: No, he’s not singing “I’m trapped under rice!” This is why we look up titles and lyrics, people. I once thought this was a bit of a filler track, but after innumerable plays on [i]Guitar Hero IV[i] back in the day, both on guitar and drums, I’ve warmed up to it significantly. I love the fierce relentlessness of “Trapped.” Exhausting double bass and super catchy and equally exhausting guitar riffs are the highlights. By the way, I [i]dare[i] you to play guitar and drums on this song in Guitar Hero IV on expert. Or, you know, the real instruments.
Escape: If “Trapped” took the crown as the filler track originally, it’s been usurped by “Escape.” It’s my least favorite track on RTL. The silver lining? The chorus has a nice, melodically sanguine sound, and it has some touching lyrics you might find taped on a 20-something’s wall or laptop. But the bulk of the song falls under the “meh” category for RTL.
Creeping Death: …Will creep up on you and bang your head for you if you’re having troubles yourself. It’s undoubtedly a highlight RTL track, and when it dawned on me that it seems to be a set list staple, I looked up “most played Metallica songs live.” Number two? “Creeping Death,” right behind “Master of Puppets” and one ahead of, well, “One,” according to Setlist.fm. If their figures are accurate, it’s been played 1428 times live. It’s just…so…HEAVY! Your challenge upon reading this is to listen to the chorus, and I’ll personally buy you a beer if you’re able to resist banging your head. No minors need apply.
Call of Ktulu: Metallica’s second instrumental, “Ktulu” contains a main driving riff that has this ominous, medieval sound to it. The song serves as a solid conclusion to Metallica’s 1984 album that went platinum [i]six times[i]. For a better Metallica instrumental, I’d sooner opt for [i]Master of Puppets[i]’s “Orion.”
Overall impressions: [i]Ride The Lightning[i] is without hesitation a strong album, and it has produced some of their most played live songs to this day. For me personally, the album is still secondary to their later albums, but it’s bounds and leaps more enjoyable than [i]Kill ‘Em All[i], and a huge step in the right direction for Metallica.

Patrick’s take:

At 11:17PM on February 19th I put on Ride The Lightning by Metallica to follow their debut Kill ‘Em All. Like Kill ‘Em All it’d been maybe a good decade before I’d heard this album in its entirety. At the age of thirteen I would’ve said this was my favorite Metallica album. Here are my conclusions/thoughts as I listened to their sophomore album:
Fight Fire with Fire has an intro where I thought, “Metallica had matured; this intro wasn’t on the previous album in sound or basis.” Then it stops and we’re back into thrash metal. This song is referencing nuclear war…cute. The solos sound different, less metal-y and more like metaly classic-y. Don’t worry, it’s the only thing so far that is different.
Title track just fell on top of me like a bunch of people in guitars dropping them from the Empire State with me in a helmet holding on top of it a massive flat bulls eye.
“Flash before my eyes/Now it’s time to die”…okay so Metallica still liked saying “die.”
Even two tracks in I sort of feel like the instrumental aspects of this album have way more depth and are passing the stages of development that are very apparent in the first. This impression came more with the title track as opposed to the opener.
For Whom the Bell Tolls is maybe my favorite Metallica song. It is about the Hemingway novel. Heavy metal about Hemingway. Ernest Heavyway. Imagine Metallica totally shitfaced reading Hemingway.
To be honest songs like Fade to Black are so lame and almost bro-y like Joe Rogan style existentialism in that way TOOL fans are. This makes me feel so awkward. I’ve heard this song at work before and had near anxiety attacks by how atrocious this song is. I just feel like if Metallica are telling me how lonely they are and how terrible everything is then I’d rather listen to My War by Black Flag (released the same year, 1984) where the agony actually seems real and tangible.
Okay as bad as this is, this is leagues ahead of Kill ‘Em All[, although in the spectrum of either of Metallica they are “different sides of the same coin.”
Speaking of the year 1984 earlier, a Google search (after turning up little in my head) of metal in 1984 shows to me a rather slow year for metal in general for records. Powerslave (Iron Maiden), Fistful of Metal (Anthrax)…the standout for the year in this field of recording is the first Saint Vitus album, a self-titled Sabbath worship fest
Trapped Under Ice is unremarkable so I’m looking at these things.
Not to be a complete jerk but sans the title track and “Bells” then, is this album really that much better than Kill ‘Em All? Sure, Ride The Lightning has way more technical prowess and songwriting capabilities, but the spotty, frayed sounds of KEA make that album more accessible to me.
Escape is another piece of fat that should be trimmed.
Creeping Death just came on. This is one of the bangers. Could this be the saving grace for the last three snoozefests or anxiety producers? This is such a good thrash song. I’d definitely ride big hills on a bike to this. I’d change a tire in a bodyshop to this. I’d eat your family to this.
The closer  The Call of Ktulu, an homage to Lovecraft, started. This track has a campy and sinister feel that I am digging more than the other slower/’progressive’-style and more lead guitar oriented tracks. Can’t stop thinking of Lovecraft during this. Imagine what he’d think. He’d probably sweat so much if he heard this. This is fully instrumental too, which I feel is appropriate. One song with blatant literary references containing lyrics per album, Metallica…
So, Ride The Lightning is over and while the standout tracks beat Kill ‘Em All by a landslide IMO (in my opinion, fool). There are gaps (the opener, the three song shot-in-the-leg starting with “Fade to Black” and ending with “Escape”) that hinder this from being what I remember it as. Then again, I don’t feel like these albums are meant to blow me away at all. My ideas aside, this album is like its predecessor, a good template for this style of music. Even the tracks I didn’t like play into the mood/feel the album has very well.
Up next is Master of Puppets, generally heralded as their masterpiece.
Highlights: Ride the Lightning, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Creeping Death