Metallica's Kill 'Em All at 40...
Released in 1983 on July 25th, I look back on a record whose impact is impossible to overstate.
Since 1990, I’ve lived in the city that Metallica’s first album was recorded in and, for a time in the early 2000s, worked at a recording studio that bought the same mixing console they used to make the album—a fact that, oddly enough, I always shrugged-off back then. Even though thrash metal, the style that Metallica are widely known for inventing, is one of my all-time favorite styles of music, I just never thought about it and even actively dismissed it whenever it came up.
Looking back, it was because I had an innate aversion to my adopted hometown over-reaching for things to be proud of. It always seemed thirsty to me. Years later, of course, it hit me that working on that board was pretty damn cool. And, as I type this, I just discovered via a friend’s Facebook thread that Metallica stayed at a house here in town while they made the album. (I’d always thought they slept at the studio.) My friend posted a picture of the house with the house number and a bunch of us—me included—were like “OMG, what street is that on?!”
His answer: “Why would I name the street? So some idiot friend of a friend can go bug the current resident?”
me: “No, so we can buy the property and turn it into a tourist spot. (I mean... yes!)”
Out of respect for the current occupants (good call on my friend’s part), I won’t re-post that pic here. It’s funny because I’ve always rolled my eyes at the “David Bowie was arrested in Rochester” story, but I’ve warmed up to our connection to Kill ‘Em All…
In 2016, I was assigned to review the deluxe reissue of the album for Pitchfork, and I wrote this:
Without belaboring the point, some albums change the course of music so profoundly that it's hard to imagine what the world was like before their arrival. Metallica's 1983 debut Kill 'Em All more or less singlehandedly launched thrash metal and established the template for every other speed- or extremity-oriented metal band on earth that's been active since. You can split hairs about the key role played by fellow ground-floor pioneers Slayer and Exodus, and point out that Anthrax and Voivod had also already formed by the time Kill 'Em All was released. You could even argue that other bands were bound to reach the same threshold of tempo and attack because the early-'80s metal underground was collectively headed in the same direction anyway—i.e: getting faster and heavier and building on the work of Motörhead, Venom, Mercyful Fate, and others.
But the fact is, several key participants in thrash metal's first wave freely admit that Kill 'Em All gave them a framework for the sound they had all been searching for. In other words, once Metallica stepped up the pace, everyone else followed suit. Listening back through modern ears, it's almost like revisiting those first three Ramones records—you know this music shaped the world you live in, but since so many artists have added extra levels of intensity since then, there's no way to re-create the sensation of how revolutionary the music was during its time.
A couple of years later, I was lucky enough to interview Kill ‘Em All producer and Rochester native Paul Curcio, whose background was a lot more interesting than I’d ever know. (Many thanks to Tony Gross for putting me in touch!) Curcio passed away not long after we spoke. Watch this space for the audio of that interview.
When you say “handling the bands’ drug-related issues,” what does that mean?
Rohan’s partner was [Michael] Stepanian. When [legendary Bay Area promoter] Bill Graham had problems with groups getting in trouble for getting busted, he would turn them over to Rohan and Stepanian. The bands were getting busted for pot, then eventually coke and all kinds of drugs. So they would make the call to Rohan and Stepanian, who were known to get deals with the courts and arrange drug rehab programs and different things that the judges would [order]. Sometimes it was just a slap on the wrist. The big names just went walking sometimes.
The Grateful Dead, my God—they were growing entire grass fields up in the Mendocino area, where they grew high-grade pot. Everyone knew it, but they never got in trouble for it. There was also Owsley Stanley, who came up with high-grade processes for growing pot and, later, for manufacturing LSD. All of this was done through the bands.
A year after that, I interviewed Megaforce Records founder Jon Zazula, whose name and story will forever be tied to Metallica’s. It was Zazula who first believed in the band, describing the first time he heard their demo tape No Life ‘Til Leather as an instant epiphany where he was suddenly overtaken by a certainty that he was going to work with the band no matter what it took. One of the highlights for me was that Zazula, whose biography Heavy Tales opens on the night he discovered Metallica were plotting to sign with another label (Elektra), told me that he was “heartbroken” over their decision.
Zazula would famously go on to work with Anthrax, Overkill, Testament, King’s X, and a slew of others. Unfortunately, that piece is still behind a paywall. It’s the only piece of mine to ever make the print edition of Billboard. My hardcopy is still in the envelope it was mailed in. I’ve still never opened it. I think I will soon.
There’s also this interview with Murder In The Front Row director Adam Dubin and Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick about the Bay Area scene that Metallica essentially launched from:
Billboard: Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett starts the film by making the East Bay out to be this awful place.
Skolnick: (Laughs.)
Can you explain that?
Skolnick: I get some pushback about that from visitors who tell me, “What do you have to complain about? You grew up in this beautiful place. It’s right by the water. It has culture.” San Francisco is like this mecca, but most people can’t afford to live there, especially now. And Berkeley has this interesting component with the university and the area surrounding it … but there was also a sense of desolation. I always felt there was a sense that many people were stuck in the ’60s. And then you get into some of the outskirts, these extended outer boroughs of the Bay Area that go on for miles. They’re suburban and pretty dull in a lot of ways. That’s what Kirk was talking about.
Around that same period, I wrote about the deluxe box-set reissue of the band’s classic 1988 fourth album …And Justice For All. Although I feel that mastering engineer Ruben Cohen did a fantastic job remastering the album, I still maintain that the band should have gone to every length to restore then-bassist Jason Newsted’s bass, which is mostly inaudible in the mix thanks to one of the most confounding and infuriating acts of self-sabotage I’ve ever heard of in all of popular music. Just an unforgivably shitty—even absuve—move. And I think the people arguing that the record needed to be re-released as it was have peanut butter in their brains.
A monumental achievement that rocketed the once-fringe subgenre of thrash metal into the zeitgeist, …And Justice for All inarguably captures Metallica at the peak of its musical ambitions. It remains a seamless example of the convergence of metal with prog-rock sensibilities. Unfortunately, the album also remains blemished. And for a band of Metallica’s stature to cut off its proverbial nose to spite its face is as unforgivable as it is unfathomable.
Given the band’s resources, the right thing to do would have been to release the original version of the mix along with a repaired mix along the same lines as the 20th-anniversary edition of Nirvana’s In Utero. Having said that, however, justice is at least partially served with this Justice reboot. For starters, mastering engineers the world over (not to mention bands and labels interested in re-releasing catalog titles) stand to learn something from Reuben Cohen’s remastering job, which is the absolute epitome of good taste. Remastering, which is something of an arcane science, can alter the sonic character of a record to such a degree that it loses its original appeal. Not the case here, and Cohen has pulled off a small miracle by enlivening the album’s airtight guitars and artificial drum tones.
Going back a bit, in 2008—around the release of the album Death Magnetic—I interviewed Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett.
In the 2007 documentary Get Thrashed, you said, “Metallica invented thrash metal.” I wanted to ask you about Exodus, who you were playing with first. Exodus’ Gary Holt says that everybody who was there knows what Exodus’ role was.
You know what? [Laughs.] I guess I was just at the center of two storms. If I was still in Exodus, I would have said that Exodus invented thrash metal. I said that only because I was in Metallica at a certain moment in time. There were steps that were being taken, and there’s a whole group of musicians who were feeling it. It was a zeitgeist. I would say Metallica and Exodus probably simultaneously, Anthrax and Slayer, too—we were all just taking cues from what we heard and what the state of heavy music was at that point. It was something that we all just kinda felt.
This year, with the release of the Metallica’s new album 72 Seasons, I did two pieces—one a story on the fans who get to watch the band perform from up-close in the exclusive-access “snake pit” area that’s embedded in the stage. Originally titled Heavy Metal’s Golden Ticket, that piece was fun because I put out an open call for fan accounts and got flooded with some really great stories.
By far the most memorable account came from jamilah (punkrockcat on the official Metallica forum), who created a six-hour documentary on Metallica’s 2003 album, “St. Anger.” As an amputee, jamilah expounds eloquently on how the music changed in meaning for her after the accident that caused her to lose her leg. Still, though it certainly tested her endurance, the Snake Pit allowed jamilah some momentary out-of-body transcendence.
I also reviewed the new album for Paste. Here’s my original intro, which didn’t make the cut:
We expect too much from aging metal bands. Imagine, for a moment, that pro sports teams from the late ‘80s/early ‘90s were still out there playing games—an absurd prospect because it defies the laws of nature. Even the bodies of supremely conditioned athletes can’t sustain peak performance capacity for long. And just like in sports, this cold truth jolted heavy metal’s heyday with a charge of existential urgency, because it was understood that the window for greatness was going to be small. As we look around today, though, scores of heavy bands from that time have managed to hang in there well into middle age, despite playing arguably the most physically demanding music ever wrought by human hands and feet.
Metallica’s present-day members are either just on the verge of or just past the age of 60. Ditto for their peers and followers in groups like Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer, Testament, Voivod, etc. At multiple points throughout 2016, while promoting Metallica’s last album Hardwired to Self-Destruct, drummer Lars Ulrich disclosed that no one knows how much longer the metal giants will be able to hold up the physical end of the bargain. That was seven years ago, which means that Metallica have been coming to terms with their musical mortality for quite some time now. Oddly, this sense of finality never appears, even as a faint shadow, in the 77 minutes of wall-to-wall riffing on the band’s eleventh studio album 72 Seasons.
Before assigning me the Kill ‘Em All review, editor Jayson Greene asked me to give scores off the top of my head for everything in their catalog, just to get a feel for how I felt about them. Here’s what I e-mailed him:
Kill 'Em All 7.5 (maybe 7.0, gotta give it credit for what it gave birth to)
Ride the Lightning 8.5 (maybe 8.0)
Master-Puppets 9.5
Garage Days EP 9.0 (killer production — the best of their career!!!)
Justice for All 9.7 -- in my opinion the apotheosis of the genre, only reason -.3 is that you can't hear the bassBlack Album 5.0
Load 3.0
Re-Load who cares
St. Anger 6.7
Death Magnetic yawn
But this is my favorite part…
Some Kind Of Monster film —
as a rock doc: 8.0
as a useful statement on therapy: 3.0
as a comedy: 10.0
For the record, I’d give Kill ‘Em All a way higher “score” now, but who cares about scores—and who cares what I think! Happy birthday to one of the greatest albums with one of the worst covers ever! And, you know, nostalgia that head that doesn’t nostalgia…
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