Hang on for the ride because if you want heavy, hard and fast, Kill ‘Em All delivers the goods. This long form approach to songwriting did not change all that much as Metallica gained mainstream success, either. The 10-song Kill ‘Em All stretches more than 50 minutes with every song, except one, exceeding more than four minutes, two passing the six minute mark and one seven minutes. Unlike the quick and fast tempos of hardcore punk that used relatively simple chords with songs barely hitting the three minute mark, Metallica took this a few steps further by building on those fast and aggressive tempos with more complex playing, time signature changes and adding length. The ambitiousness of Kill ‘Em All cannot be understated. Mustaine went on to sobriety and founded competing metal band Megadeth. Dave Mustaine, the original guitarist for Metallica until he was kicked out for drug and alcohol abuse and replaced by Hammett, wrote three of the songs on Kill ‘Em All. Cliff Burton was tragically lost in a bus accident in 1986 while the band was on tour in Sweden. Hetfield holds down the mic, Lars Ulrich works behind the kit and Kirk Hammet leads on guitar. Much of Metallica from 1983 remains in the band 40 years later. Granted, some hits played on radio today bear little in common with the speed and dynamics spilled out on Kill ‘Em All. Kill ‘Em All remains a landmark album for thrash metal music and while many old school fans lament over the band’s departure from the genre, the music of Metallica arguably hasn’t drifted too far from those early head-banging years. Though age would have prevented Hetfield from keeping up with his earlier style anyway, he took vocal lessons after experiencing issues during a performance of the cover song “So What?” during the Black Album tour which the timeline indicates he had already started the vocal change prior to the eponymous Metallica album that coincidentally brought the band fully out of the garage and into the mainstream. Though his vocals did begin a noticeable change for 1988’s …And Justice for All from the higher pitched spit on prior albums. But, Metallica embraced more of a harder edge to hard rock not too many years later as singer James Hetfield replaced the almost screamo style vocals on Kill ‘Em All and several follow-up albums, for the tone and range displayed on 1991’s eponymous Black Album that carries through to this day. The fast-paced speed metal of Metallica’s debut album Kill ‘Em All introduced a whole new genre of music quickly separating itself from the heavy metal of the day. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone, not already in the know, to identify the band that released Kill ‘Em All as the same band that released Hardwired…To Self-Destruct.

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