Today marks 40 years since the release of Ride the Lighting, Metallica’s sophomore album. Get the limited-edition electric blue vinyl of the record and read our retrospective article below. Watch Metallica perform live this summer as well.
Ride the Lightning marked a quantum jump in terms of lyrics and structure, and while the band’s debut album, Kill ‘Em All, was a milestone for thrash metal, the first four Metallica albums rank among the genre’s most influential and timeless records.
While Ride the Lightning, released July 27, 1984, focused more on a near-neo-classical sense of grandeur drawn from the pages of groups like Rush, Rainbow, Blue Öyster Cult, and even Priest’s more grandiloquent epics than bands like Sweet or even the more rock ‘n’ roll end of hardcore punk—a genre that the band members were vocal fans of—Kill ‘Em All heavily relied on elements of boogie beats stolen from ’70s Judas Priest and the heavy swung feel to fast-paced riffs that Dave Mustaine would eventually take with him to Megadeth.
not for Kill ‘Em All’s more programmatic songs like “Four Horsemen,” “No Remorse,” and “Phantom Lord,” which attempted to evoke the epics-in-miniature of NWOBHM bands like Diamond Head and less well-known acts like Savage, this shift would be puzzling. Songs like “Fight Fire With Fire” and “Fade to Black” by Ride the Lightning are examples of how their stylistic experimentation has progressed, building on the atmospheric elements found in those earlier tracks. In contrast, songs like “Whiplash” and “Jump in the Fire” are more aggressive and heavy metal in nature. With the exception of the band’s disliked song “Escape” (more on that one later), this change became the cornerstone of practically every Ride the Lightning song.
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