Kill Em

Product Information

Kill Em’ All”, just maybe the most influential thrash metal album of all time? Well some would agree, some would disagree. I think we can all agree that this album is one the most important thrash metal albums of all time. Introducing the masses to this new thing called thrash metal with some help from Overkill and Exodus, but demos aside, Metallica, for me at least, takes the glory when it comes to first full length thrash album ever. Basically everything else on here ranges from either "okay" to "bland". "Whiplash" and "Phantom Lord" would both benefit from Metallica reining themselves in and focusing on their strengths, rather than trying to be metal for metal's sake. There's a lot of action going on, but they don't quite pull the vibe they're going for off. "Jump in the Fire", meanwhile, is a sort of recapturing of "Hit the Lights" but without the charm. First. I'd like to say that James Hetfield is a riff machine! Hetfield's riffs are in vein of Diamond Head's Brian Tatler but faster. Hetfield clearly shows his inspiration from the NWOBHM. Hetfield's vocal delivery is also raw and unhinged, he shouts with a raspy edge; unlike his Sean Harris vocal delivery of the demo days. Released in 1983, this is the album that placed Metallica on the map. It's where Metallica finally got their true style, as their previous demo "No Life 'til Leather" is where they experimented a bit with a variety of sounds. While much better thrash metal albums would come out years later, their debut album still holds up today. Your computer may be infected with malware or spyware that makes automated requests to our server and causes problems.

Phantom Lord is notable for its mellower bridge, and No Remorse for its pre-chorus riff, which I really enjoy. Cannibal Corpse has a cover of this song, and they do a good job. As for Seek and Destroy, it’s a solid piece, but its catchiness is really the only reason it’s played so often in concert. Unlike Metallica's later and current material, there are actually songs on here that don't break the 5 minute mark, which is a definate plus. Too many bands nowadays seem to think that a song isn't good until it's over 12 minutes long, has a thousand changes in it, and consists of guitar solos that regularly break the 2 minute mark. There is such a thing as overdoing it, and thankfully at this time period Metallica understood that. The outlier on this album is obviously Cliff's bass solo, dubbed "Anesthesia" (Pulling Teeth". Technically it's quite a display, but unfortunately it's too long for it's own good and there are only 2 sections that really provide a dynamic contrast, and that is helped along by the drums entering. Joey Demaio did a much better job a year before this album with his rendition of the William Tell Overture, which was probably technically more difficult than this song is as well, though obviously it wasn't original.

Release

Well here it is ladies and gentleman, the album that started thrash! Metallica successfully took NWOBHM and fused it with hardcore punk on their 1983 debut. This album is pure speed throughout, it just doesn't let up! Let's take a look at the album... Metallica is an exception to this rule. All of the songs from their first demo made it onto Kill Em All, and this stuff is pretty solid. The riffs are memorable and the solos excellent, the songs are fast and furious; everyone performs well, even Lars. His drumbeats are the typical generic patterns, but he works in some cool fills here and there. You can identify the album just by James’ voice. It has more of a shriek to it, but it’s well-suited to the music. I can actually hear the bass, and I’m not talking about just Anesthesia, I mean most of the album. There isn’t a decrease in quality over time, though you have standout songs. The album length (51 minutes) is just right for the amount of variation heard, and the song lengths themselves are short, the longest song only at seven minutes and Motorbreath at the shortest in their whole discography (barely three minutes). I wish they’d used this idea of shorter songs their whole career. There’s less experimentation with structure than in any of their other eighties works, but Kill Em All doesn’t need that. Its influences are obvious, and if you listen to it, it’s easy to tell that they were listening to lots of NWOBHM and punk when they wrote it. It literally defines thrash metal in a way that Metallica’s other albums don’t. As they went on, they became less and less thrashy, with this album the only pure thrash they’ve put out. Master of Puppets has about two complete thrash songs on it, and this is being generous because each of them have specifically non-thrash intros (Battery and Damage Inc). …And Justice For All should not be considered thrash at all, except for Dyers Eve.

This is a speed metal album with thrashy parts. The speed is what really catches anyone from the start. Next, the crunchy and ripping guitar tones make this almost automatically heavier than any predecessor (excluding maybe Venom and Motorhead). The guitars are also extremely catchy at points with songs like The Fourhorse Men, No Remorse, Whiplash, Etc. No band up until this point had this sort of mix. The solos are both easy to listen to and technical. They are not too special but they defiantly get the job done here. Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge. The year was 1983, and the stage was set for a phenomenon. An up and coming band had just fired their guitarist Dave Mustaine and called upon the services of former Exodus man Kirk Hammett for the recording of their ten song debut. The band was Metallica, taking their influences from the brash style of Venom and Judas Priest, they were to push the boundaries of what was acceptable in heavy music of its day to the absolute limit, creating a raw, powerful debut album that is generally considered to be the absolute birth of thrash metal. Here the guitars sound as raw as ever and the sound is ultra sharp. Surely the best guitars you can have from this legendary album. The cons is the bottom end. This pressing like the 1st "MFN" pressing, hasen't big bass and the reason for that is because "Tim Young" mastering was like that in the beginning. But this "Roadrunner" pressing has little more bass and warmer sound against the "MFN" 1st pressing. Is much more better pressing with very natural sound.

The Four Horsemen” and “Seek And The Destroy” are the best songs on here. On Four Horsemen James actually sounds descent. And Seek And Destroy is nicely catchy. The other songs are somewhat worth listening to, if only for the magnificent leads. Again, thank you Dave Mustaine. I've got some reservations currently in writing this review. For one thing, it's kind of weird to know that you like an album less than every reviewer before you. People think very highly of this album, and why shouldn't they? Hell, I think highly of this album. I've got a tremendous amount of respect for what Kill 'Em All was able to do. It was one of the first thrash albums many people heard, it put Metallica at the forefront of a brand-new subgenre of metal that was attempting to play heavier and faster than the bands they were inspired by, and there's a lot of youthful energy on display here that is quite infectious. This is an important album in metal's history, to say the least, and for that, I give it all the credit in the world. The thuggish lyrics on Kill 'Em All updated Motörhead's roaming-pirate vibe for a younger generation of brash American kids, as reflected in lines like "The show is through, the metal's gone / It's time to hit the road / Another town, another gig / Again we will explode" from the headbanging anthem "Whiplash." Fueled by hatred for L.A. hair metal and a pop mainstream that the band never could have dreamed would embrace it eight years later, Kill 'Em All raised a middle finger in the air while sounding a trumpet of unity for metalheads everywhere with its us-against-the-world mentality. Now, of course, its youthful persecution complex seems silly and sophomoric. What we have here is a collection of great songs that just happened to be faster and more jagged than anything else released in 1983. Yes we could snidely remark about Show No Mercy, but that was still a few months away. Not to mention that it would be dishonest to deny Metallica's (or at the least Dave Mustaine's) influence on the thrash scene. The vocals to the album are done by the renowned James Hetfield. His vocals are a mix between a shout of might and power, and a shout of rage and anger. The vocals fit perfectly with the aggressive atmosphere. In "No Remorse", the song's lyrics about not showing remorse when fighting in war are enhanced with the harsh vocals of Hetfield. His vocals in this album would be the start of his many memorable moments in Metallica's later works.

On other hand, the lyrics here are hilarious. While not speaking about Satan and darkness and killing goats, their lyrical subjects were, hm, just laughable, really. Behold. Beyond that, this vinyl is one of the best sounding pressings of the album and probably the 2nd best out there (imo) after the "Columbia House" club edition of 1988 that contains the best mastering of "Bob Ludwig. So, what deep, harrowing topics does the songwriting on Kill 'Em All cover? life in the fast lane, and...more life in the fast lane, mostly. Just about every song is about how great it is to live fast, or how great it is to be Metallica, or just how great thrash metal is. And in the end, isn't that the noblest of causes? Now, we've gotten past the album cover and instrumentation, and the songwriting process is where people get divided. Yes, we all know about Dave Mustaine contributing to some of the songs on the album, and "Mechanix" being renamed "The Four Horsemen" after he was fired from the band, but some of the most CLASSIC metal lyrics are found on this album:

Recommendations

Kill 'Em All" is generally called the first thrash metal record, and while I would argue that it isn't(Motorhead, Raven, and Venom were doing speed earlier), it's damned important, and the next one would tie up all the disparate elements and give us the first true thrash record. But I'm reviewing "Kill 'Em All" and it deserves our attention. RoadRunner 1st pressing without "MFN" logo:The most raw version of the album. It lags on bass because they use the "Tim Young" mastering and it was bad imo but "Roadrunner" did excellent job on the cutting process and this version it sounds very sharp and very lively. The tone of the whole album is set by the killer first riff to 'Hit The Lights', to this day one of the greatest riffs of all time, and the song itself is a thing of sheer visceral beauty, climaxing with a spiralling solo. You know, for all the shit that Lars gets as a drummer and as a human being, I truly cannot find any fault with his playing on this album (or any Metallica album really). Sure there are some unnecessary fills here and there, but a) what drummer hasn't done that, and b) I can think of at least two more respected by the underground bands who's drummers noticeably fall out of tempo in the middle of the song. This was 1983 on a Megaforce recording budget, I refuse to believe anyone involved in the making of this album had access to anything that could razor edit any instances of Lars loses time. The vocals add to the heaviness with James Hetfield going from whiny vocals reminiscent of the N.W.O.B.H.M. bands they adore and aspired to be like, to gruff and crude barks in the style of Cronos of Venom and Lemmy from Motorhead. Almost every song on this album has the two different styles displayed within the first 2 verses and chorus of each song. The vocals are very well delivered in general. Most phrasing feel comfortable and catchy.