So, the announcement that Metallica are headlining a UK summer fest for the third time in four years has brought the usual range of, erm, predictible responses. I can’t think of another band that polarises opinion this way, especially in view of what they’ve given us over the years. I guess haters just have to hate. The usual whine is “they’re not as good as they used to be”, well I hate to break it to you but there aren’t many bands on the planet who are as good as Metallica used to be. Metallica at their worst are still a lot better than many bands are at their best.
Just not Lulu, that’s indefensibly shit….
The thing is, no matter what you may say this is a band who have never been afraid to take chances and defy expectations. Christ they’ve done it from the very beginning, name me a Thrash metal (or speed metal, or whatever, let’s not split hairs) album before Kill Em All that included a (one take) bass solo ? Nope, didn’t happen. Shall we put in another 3 minutes of proto-thrash ? nooo, let’s put in an instrumental bit….
Once Metallica lit the fuse under an entire genre it became a case of evolve or be caught up in the deluge that they triggered. So they improved their technical skills, wrote some more varied and complex songs. By the time all the Kill Em All inspired bands were getting their albums out Metallica had left the building. Haven taken thrash just about as far as they could with their début they developed, moved on and risked alienating the three power chords and 300bpm thrash metal fans…
But they didn’t.
Maybe if the internet had been a big thing then Ride The Lightning would have been the beginning of the end, “grumble, grumble they’ve gone all technical, they have choruses, James is singing, BOO sellouts”. But that didn’t happen, we didn’t have the keyboard ninjas on Facebook giving us the benefit of their pointless opinions.
Ride The Lightning is, for some, the ultimate expression of Metallica’s art. They had proved they could evolve and expand their sound without losing what made them unique. How many albums that came before did Ride The Lightning sound like ? None. How many albums since have tried to copy it ? Hundreds ? Thousands ?. Just as they had with Kill Em All Metallica had produced something original, and just like Kill Em All it became a benchmark for bands to aspire to for the next 2 and a bit decades.
So, where would they go from there, more of the same ???
Waaaay back “in the day” the arrival of the follow-up to Ride The Lightning was expected to see the gap Metallica had built up at the head of the thrash pack narrow. Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer, Nuclear Assault and Testament had all released (or were about to release) some of their seminal albums, but what Metallica pulled out the hat next redefined the musical landscape in a way that probably hasn’t occurred since.
The impact that Master Of Puppets had on Heavy Metal when it came out can never be understated. This is where I end up sounding like some really old fart (shush !!), but I remember skiving off work at lunch time to cycle to the Virgin Records in Edinburgh’s Princess Street to buy it, then sitting all afternoon in the factory waiting for the home time bell to sound. I swear by the time I left I’d read and memorised most of the liner notes 
Then the first time you actually heard it… it was like nothing that had existed before. The album got played again, and again, and again, it was literally life changing. In a world without 24 hour instant access to virtually anything this was a cultural event. And we counted down the days until the tour started. And we queued up after the gig to get our leather jackets autographed, and we shook their hands. And they were just like us..
Well not Lars obviously, he’s not like anyone else…
If you hear Master Of Puppets for the first time nowadays (or any other time in the past 20 years) it just couldn’t have the same impact. We’ve all heard hundreds of albums that sound like it, but back then it was unique. You see the thing about this album, above all the others from that era, is that it’s never been beaten. People have borrowed from it, imitated it and been inspired by it… but no one has bettered it. It took Metal into the mainstream in a way that had never really happened before and set Metallica off on their inexorable journey to being the biggest band on the planet.
Then it almost all ended, only a few days after signing autographs in the back room of the Edinburgh Playhouse Cliff Burton was dead. I still remember the feeling when I found out the news. Devastated doesn’t come close, to steal a quote from Marillion “he was the first of our own” a normal bloke. And then there was the million dollar question… what would happen next, would the band go on ?
And obviously it was the cue for 20 years of “ooohhh, they’re not as good as when Cliff was alive, oooohhh, Cliff will be spinning in his grave”. It’s pointless to speculate what Metallica would have been like if Cliff was still with us but I suppose it gives the haters something to hang their hats on. And trolls don’t usually need a point anyway.
The release of the $5.98 E.P marked the end of one era and the beginning of another, it was the first appearance of Jason Newstead on bass (an addition to the band that probably did more for Flotsam And Jetsam’s sales in the UK than anything else). The E.P. gave the band their first hit single (James commenting on stage at Monsters Of Rock that “We’re fucking pop stars now”). And, more importantly, showed that Metallica would live on.
Thank Christ for that, I didn’t want to imagine a Metal landscape without them in it.
….And Justice For All found the band, once again, changing their style and going slow, heavy and slightly epic. Master Of Puppets was an impossible thing to follow and in my opinion they had to do something different. OK, so they never were a band to repeat a formula just because it was successful but if they had just gone out and released Master Pt 2 it could never have compared with the original. And as it was …AJFA took the band’s profile and launched it further into the stratosphere. Master reached number 41 in the UK album charts, this got to number 4 and spawned two top 20 singles.
Is …AJFA a thrash album ? Well it was certainly different. Listening now it hasn’t aged as well as the others, the production isn’t great, and there is almost no bass (go find “And Justice For Jason” where some smartarse has redone the bass parts and mixed them back into the album, you’ll never listen to the original again!! ).
This was the first time I heard anyone use the phrase “sell out” about Metallica.
Wouldn’t be the fucking last though….
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