Ride the Lightning by Metallica Defined the 80's: A Classic 80s Music Review

March 5^th, 1985, Denver Colorado:

On impulse, I convince a psychology professor to go see this band with me. I've read about them but never actually listened closely to them before. They were just a name that popped up in underground metal and punk 'zines here and there. The reviewers without fail were excited about Metallica, one even calling them "the greatest thing since sliced bread!"

We have third row center seats at the now defunct, small and intimate Rainbow Music Hall in Denver CO. We miss the opening band and get in just in time for the beginning of Metallica's set.

There are a few bars of sweet classically flavored guitar, followed by a barrage of metallic brutality unlike anything I had ever heard before. It sounded like hardcore punk, but these dudes had long hair, and they actually knew how to play their instruments!

It's the "Ride the Lightning" tour, and Metallica rips through each song of the album, no breaks, no talking between songs, and the level of intensity only changes for a minute when the late Cliff Burton does a bass guitar solo, the likes of which I am certain I will never hear again. It is quite possible that Cliff Burton was the most talented original member of Metallica, and that bass solo will be in my head for the rest of my life.

I walk out of the Rainbow Music Hall knowing that thanks to Metallica, for better or worse, life will never be the same.

The very next day, I go out and buy the vinyl, and listen to the classic 80s album Ride the Lightning in the comfort of my room.

Each song speaks directly to me, from the opening track "Fight Fire with Fire," and it's images of nuclear annihilation, to the title cut's Kafkaesque ("consciousness my only friend") journey to the electric chair, the desperation of "Trapped Under Ice" ("...I'm dying to live....") the musical suicide note "Fade to Black" that brought feelings I've experienced so many times into clear musical and lyrical focus, the harrowing rendition of the biblical plagues visited on Egypt in "Creeping Death," and finally the epic instrumental, "The Call of Ktulu."

Metallica redeemed the bleakness of the mid-eighties with their rejection of the LA/Hollywood glam-metal aesthetics. There was no boasting about booze, cars, and chicks to be found in their work. David Lee Roth's clowning, and the sexism and tacky Satanic poses of Motley Crue were put in their place by this music that seemed to be solely concerned with the harshest realities of life.

Here in America, only Metallica, Metallica defector Dave Mustaine's band Megadeth, and the whole faction of speed/death/thrash/metal bands that appeared in the late seventies and early eighties produced anything that was worth listening to. All of what I consider to be the classic 80s albums came from this faction.

The British old school; Ozzy, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden continued to deliver quality work, producing a number of 80s classics in their own right, but with Priest and Maiden, as is often the case, only their tamer offerings endured on the airwaves.

Metallica truly ruled, and Ride the Lightning defined the spirit of the times; it was a soundtrack for Armageddon and a cry for life and freedom in a time of death and fascism. Until Guns 'n Roses finally disrupted the lameness of the LA scene, Metallica was everything.

I never met any of the guys in the band, but I feel as if we all grew up together, growing, shifting in our political and philosophical views, reaching adulthood, marriages, children, addiction and detoxification, and finally as we feel the magnetic field of death intensifying, rediscovering our pure will to live, and rage at all that would deny us our lives. We are back where we started, fighting fire with fire and riding the lightning. The final show of the Death Magnetic tour on February 2^nd 2009 in Newark New Jersey affirmed this.

Thank you Metallica for being the definitive metal band of the last quarter-century and for music that somehow helped me survive the most despairing episodes of my own life.

Where to buy the classic 80s album Ride the Lightning by Metallica:

www.amazon.com/Ride-Lightning-Metallica/dp/B000002H2H

www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/1095400/a/Ride+The+Lightning.htm

www.samgoody.com/viewproduct.htm

On Vinyl
www.hottopic.com/hottopic/store/muze_new.jsp

www.tower.com/ride-lightning-metallica-vinyl/wapi/111962887

Reference/Notes:

The Songs:

1. Fight Fire with Fire - 04:44 (Hetfield, Ulrich, Burton)
2. - 06:36 (Hetfield, Ulrich, Burton, Mustaine)
3. For Whom the Bell Tolls - 05:10 (Hetfield, Ulrich, Burton)
4. - 06:56 (Hetfield, Ulrich, Burton, Hammett)
5. Trapped Under Ice - 04:30 (Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett)
6. Escape - 04:23 (Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett)
7. Creeping Death - 06:36 (Hetfield, Ulrich, Burton, Hammett)
8. - 08:52 (instrumental, Hetfield, Ulrich, Burton, Mustaine)

All lyrical quotes and references, for review and critique only, are from Ride the Lightning by Metallica, 1984 Vertigo Records