One day Chuck came over to the Roach Motel. He was pretty excited about a band he had been listening to. You gotta check these guys out! He put a cassette into the deck and I hear somebody say “Bass solo take one.” it was Metallica’s (Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth from Kill ‘Em All. It was metal, but a different kind of metal. It seemed to take the speed of Iron Maiden and make it faster. It took the industrial quality of Accept and make it more mechanized.
Needless to say, we were blown away and instant Metallica fans. We went shopping right away. Aric bought Kill ‘Em All I bought Ride The Lightning. Which was all they had out at the time. Master Of Puppets was still a few months away.
Kill ’em All was such a great album. It still is my favorite. I seem to like each successive release just s little less. Kill ’em All still sounds new to me. I was just listening to it and Hetfield sounds like a kid. His voice sounds really young. That was thirty years ago. It is a weird notion that bands like Metallica have been around for 30 years. In the warped time perspective of my mind, only bands like The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Aerosmith have been around that long.
I couldn’t believe how fast it sounded at first. The songs were all over 5 minutes long and had these long instrumental bridges and filled with chunka-chunka guitar parts. Like Iron Maiden, the subject matter was not about girls and parties but fire, war and legends.
My first favorite was Jump In The Fire but that was soon eclipsed by Seek & Destroy. That is such a great song. Of course Anesthesia still takes me back to that moment of discovery with such clarity even after all these years.
The Four Horsemen
Jump In The Fire
(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth
Seek & Destroy
I know that many would disagree with me that this is indeed the best Metallica album of all time but to me it is the core.