'Who Are Metallica?'

'The Album'

'Album Art'

1. Fight Fire With Fire
2. Ride The Lightning
3. For Whom The Bell Tolls
4. Fade To Black
5. Trapped Under Ice
6. Escape
7. Creeping Death
8. The Call of Ktulu

I love the way this song opens the album, it's a brilliant intro, it stars off with an acoustic guitar, but even that sounds a little heavy, with other guitar parts in the background, this only last around 20 seconds until Metallica do what they always did in the early 80's and that's play some heavy thrash metal!
True to Metallica this opening riff is heavy, simple and so very hard hitting, it just knocks you out of your seat, puts you on your feat and makes you pull out that beautiful looking air guitar, thrash at its best.
First time I heard this I found the vocals a bit odd, just the way it's like a word at a time 'Do…On…..To others…..As…..They've done to you' but even though it's a bit strange its still really catchy and goes well with the backing music, which does help when playing air guitar, and if you've ever wanted a solo to air guitar to here's a brilliant one, the intro to this solo is one of the albums best, reminds me of the solo intro to No Remorse, another Metallica classic.
There isn't really much else to this song, a catchy and simple chorus just 'Fight fire with fire, the ending is near…' and towards the end of the song the words 'Fight fire with fire' is just repeated fore a while until James is almost screaming it.
Now this song, to me, is just an intro to the title track as the ending part with just a quick repetitive beat on the drum, like the heavy part on 'One' leads straight into the killer opening riff off 'Ride the Lightning' and when listening to it on iTunes, as I am now, they miss out the few seconds of nothingness and go straight into the next song, so I'd advise using iTunes for this album.

'Ride The Lightning'

Flash before my eyes
Now it's time to die
Burning in my brain
I can feel the flame

One of Metallica's all time classic, a really simple song as a whole; the intro just shows any bass haters what the instrument can do when used by a trained professional like Cliff Burton, one of the greatest bassists to have lived, along with Steve Harris who is probably the best.
The simple power chords and the powerful bass riff combine extremely well and just sets the song up for so many brilliant yet easy riffs, the hard hitting heaviness of the first one as the guitars slide up the neck producing such an effortless amount of heaviness, this of course is then destroyed with one of Metallica's best riffs, played a total of 16 times by Kirk Hammett before entering into the chorus riff. That's the traditional 2 minutes of intro by Metallica.
Now into the verse and surprise surprise yet another simple riff, well just a power chord actually, couldn't make it much easier, yet somehow Metallica makes the song feel so electrified and with the lyrics about death, possibly in relation to the novel 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' by Ernest Hemingway, but I just love the lyrics:

Relatively simplistic lyrics with a very catchy rhyme pattern and a very catchy chorus to match, 'For whom the bell tolls, Time marches on' easy enough and that's probably why its such a great crowd pleaser, well and the fact that there is no solo so its pretty easy for them to do live, unlike the rest of the songs. The song slowly in a similar way to how it started but with a little bit of craziness from Kirk to make up for the lack of solo, then the song goes onto one of the best Metallica songs and one of the best songs ever made, in my mind, Fade To Black.

This only lasts about 20 seconds before the song goes back to its original verse riff and another slow background solo goes throughout the verse. Then again, like before, the mood changes as the words 'I was me, but now hes gone.'

'Trapped Under Ice'

Freezing
Can't move at all
Screaming
Can't hear my call
I am dying to live
Cry out
I'm trapped under ice

Escape, although a good song, it is probably the worst song on the album, only just behind Trapped Under Ice, it's just that song had a blistering opening solo. The song opens relatively slow, with no real energy in either the intro or the repetitiveness off the verse riff, this song is basically saved through the quality of the sound, even though the verse riff is just constant open E strings, it does sound hard and heavy, which is always nice, also the chorus is yet again really catchy and soft:

I'm a man for catchy melodies and fun-to-sing lyrics, one of the reasons why I love Maiden so much and this song luckily provides us with that catchiness. Now I love Metallica and all but this isn't one of Kirks best solos, it does fit with the song well, possibly too well as I fancied a really fast solo to overlap the riff, instead I didn't really feel much energy, then the song plays with the last line of the chorus being repeated as a siren sounds in the background this then fades away until you hear the sound of Creeping Death!

'Creeping Death'

Slaves
Hebrews born to serve, to the pharaoh
Heed
To his every word, live in fear

Right, this is defiantly the hardest song on the album to talk about, for two reasons, one it's really long, almost 9 minutes in fact and second of all, it's an instrumental, so I can't talk about lyrics, just pure music.
It's actually surprising how quick this song goes, as there is so much going on, your mind gets taken away due to the speed changes and the different riffs, it really is a brilliant song. The introduction is both beautiful and some how rather sexy, which is weird for a Metallica song, well I find it sexy, probably because I'm a little strange but it doesn't deny the fact it's a good intro, with, thanks to Cliff Burton, a really good bass line at a different pace to the other riff that adds that dynamic feel to the song.
Then after about a minute or so the riff changes, you'll find this a lot, and your taken somewhere else from where you thought you was going and although this part is rather heavy, its still soft, don't ask me how, it just is. The rhythm carries on until around 4 minutes where it picks up from some good guitar work and eventual soloing from Kirk but with a slower background sound, now we're at the half way point, don't worry it gets better from here, somehow, well it starts off getting better with a much heavier feel and a lot more vertical movement up the neck of the guitar giving increasing note sound that begins to build towards the next stage of the song.
The pace then gets slower before continuing with a new riff and this has a nice little headbanging moment as it draws to the final few minutes of the song and as its an instrumental everything takes long, each passage extended so you will find a lot of repetition before it goes back to the intro part, this is where the final outro of the album comes, with a build up from the drums and an final power chord riff that should used a lot more frequently, but is still a brilliant closing to any album, basically by this point your ready to start again as your slightly gutted its come to an end whilst being chuffed with how good it was. So that's The Call of Ktulu, a weird name and one that I don't think I can say correctly, but a good song none the less.

Well, what can I say? This is my favourite Metallica album and possibly my second favourite album of all time, just behind Painkiller and only just above Powerslave. Its an album that shows what Metallica where capable of, of course we all now know that they've lost that edge with their age and are now trying to redeem themselves with Death Magnetic, which is their best album since selling out in 1991, but still, its no Ride the Lightning and nothing they ever do will compare with this album, if you're a fan of heavy metal then you don't need me to describe the feeling of this album, if your not then I either suggest you listen to it, or you start off lighter and build yourself up.