• AllMyVinyl #153
• Band: Metallica
• Album Title: Kill ’em All
• Release Date: 25 Jul 1983
• Date purchased: 3 Feb 2021
• Location purchased: Walmart
• Color of vinyl: translucent maroon (officially “Jump In the Fire Engine Red Vinyl”)
• Number of discs: 1
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

This is an album I always had a weird relationship with.  I didn’t discover Metallica until the next album was current, and didn’t really crystallize as a fun until Master of Puppets came out.   This first album was one I for the longest time went “Yeah, that first one, it wasn’t as good”.  It had a far more raw sound than either of the two albums that succeeded it.  I kind of lumped it in with the first Megadeth album which shares the same sound difference, and went “yeah, don’t like that one”.  Oh sure, there were a couple of individual songs I liked, but as a whole?  I never cared for this album. I don’t think I ever actively disliked it, but even into the Load/Reload era, I tended to put Kill “em All all the way at the bottom of my list of Metallica albums.  That kind of stuck with me – I never really gave it a fair shot.

Oh, I knew about all the stories with Dave Mustaine and writing credits and all that, but I think part of that “oh both bands released the same song on their first albums with different lyrics” stuff is kind of what turned me off, as I felt it was just two bands and rather pedestrian first albums, and honestly blew it off.  When I went to listen to Metallica, it was always something else.  With bands I get into after they’ve already been going, I will generally go backwards and dive into the older stuff, but for this one I never did.  Now that’s not to say I never listened to it – I did.  And of course the biggest hits were known, but I tended to gravitate towards live versions of those, not the original first album.

I did actually own it on CD – I don’t remember where I picked that up, but it like I laid out above was never one of the ones I played much.  That was pretty much it for me buying it over the years until 2021 when Metallica re-issued all their studio albums on vinyl in a couple of sets through Walmart.  That’s where this one came from.  It’s nothing special in terms of extras, but it was a new pressing.  The vinyls in that series were all some sort of color vinyl – this one is a translucent maroon that they call “Jump in the Fire Engine Red”.  They all had some Metallica sounding goofy name for the colored vinyl.  They call it red, but it seems more like a maroon color to me.  A minor quibble.

One thing I wanted to add about this one – it’s something I’ve done a couple of times with albums in this series that I don’t think I’ve detailed before.  If it’s an album I’m not as familiar with, or especially something NEW, then I will listen to it before “listening to it” on the vinyl for my writeup.  That’s what I did here. Over the last week or so I put on Kill ’em All via Apple Music when driving around in the car, and suddenly – in 2025, this album clicked for me.  I’m not sure why I felt different.  It’s obviously the same songs.  Not remixed or anything, so why I reacted differently, I really don’t know.  But the pre-listen via digital changed my mind.  It still has the same raw sound, but man I got into it like I’d never done before.

The band here is the powerhouse classic lineup – Hetfield / Ulrich / Hammett / Burton.  In terns of their overall career, this lineup didn’t last terribly long (RIP Cliff), but did produce three studio albums, all projecting upwards.  I was lucky enough to see them live with Cliff, but not on this tour – wasn’t for a couple more years for that.  Hard to find anything wrong with this lineup, so let’s just get into it.

Oh, before I do, I wasn’t planning on dwelling a ton on the Mustaine connections here.  Most Metallica fans knew it happened, but I’m just gonna deal with the album is it is here and not get into the politics.  It’s something I kind of wish Dave would stop going on about after 40 years, so I’ll just mostly stay away from it (but not completely).

Hit the Lights – This one pretty much sets the mood right from the start.  The song comes out and punches you in the face and doesn’t let go.  In these early days, Metallica had a far thrasher feel and reputation than they did a couple of decades down the line.  I do like the speed in the guitar riffs.   The chorus has a nice hook too.  That in the face feel extends to the vocals a lot of James vocals here are far more “scream-y” than usual – so much so that some of it is the weak parts of the song for me.  Great guitar solo here.  Overall, not my favorite song on the album, but it’s a great album opener with a really darned good solo so it works well in that regard.

The Four Horseman – The longest song on the album at 7:08, this is one I always liked through the general blasé I described above.  I love the crunchy guitar riff that starts the song off, and then just gets faster once the whole band kicks in.  I’m always up for a good crunchy riff, and this has that in spades.  It keeps that crunch going through the whole song.  Roughly three minutes in it changes slightly – still fast, but in the sequence of the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” sequence “Pestilence/Death/etc” I love the way the names are shouted as a background.  Right before the guitar solo starts, we get a fairly up front appearance by Cliff.  He’s not buried on the album like some people on albums are (hello And Justice For All), but still – it’s nice to see him out there.   It does seem to go on a bit long towards the end, but that’s not a huge quibble.  It’s a great track, and probably my favorite on the album.

Motorbreath – On an album full of thrash songs, I like this one.  When I was driving around in the aforementioned digital listen I found myself jamming out behind the wheel (which has gotten me a ticket in the past), so I had to chill out, but I recognize that song that does that to me is a good jam.  There’s not a lot of variety here, it’s dialed up to 10 right from the start and there’s no real slowdown section – even the guitar solo is faster paced than the already fast part of the song.  No bloody idea what the lyrics are about, don’t really care.  It’s a good jam.

For the record, the song I last got a speeding ticket out of jamming over was “The Rising” by Bruce Springsteen.

Jump in the Fire – If Horseman wasn’t on this album Jump in the Fire would be my favorite track.  This isn’t as lightning fast as some of the other tracks on the album.  By no means is it super slow or anything.  It’s more the kind of pace that some latter Metallica output was like.  This is more my speed.  I can be into a super trash-y song and really like it, but my personal tastes are not as far down the bleeding edge of speed.  It’s not the most complex riffing they do, but it clearly works as I get into this one a bunch.  I do love the mix of the repeating riff from the whole song carrying on while some different riffage plays over top of it.  Good stuff.

(Anesthesia) – Pulling Teeth – Basically a mostly 4 minute bass solo (Heck it starts with “Bass Solo Take 1”).  It’s well named.  If you look at the real life activity of “pulling teeth”, people don’t want to do that, and I don’t want to do this song.  I don’t get any enjoyment out of it.  On the few times I’ve forced myself to listen to the whole thing vs just skipping over it, I usually have some variant of “can this be over please?”  It’s not like I don’t like Cliff – I love Cliff, but of the handful of Cliff centric songs that exist in the Metallica catalogue, this one is my least favorite.  It’s a bit more interesting when the rest of the band kicks in, but overall, this is the low point of the album for me.

Whiplash – “acting like a maniac… WHIPLASH!” Given what I said about Cliff a minute ago, I love the start of this song has the bass mixed out in front, great sound to start this song that returns to the general thrash-y speed of the album.  No bloody idea what the lyrics are (without looking them up) in the verse part of the song.  The verse part is different, perhaps why I’m more into that part of it.  I have memories of them playing this live in the past, I recall some audience participation in the “Whiplash” after like “acting like a maniac”.  I also love James screaming “here we go” as they drop into the guitar solo.  That always struck me as a self aware type of thing to say in a metal track.  I don’t have a lot of deep words to add to this one – great piece of thrash should about cover it.

Phantom Lord – This starts off with what sounds like synth keys.  I went looking around and there’s some discussion that it could just be Cliff and a lot of pedal work, but it really feels like keys to me.  Is anyone reading this have any CONCLUSIVE proof of it?  Not just what you think it is, but an actual statement from Metallica on the matter?   This song has more of a sound that makes me think of the phrase “marching” – not like a marching band, but like military soldiers marching.  It’s odd sometimes what audio makes you think of visual in your head.  Once the main part of the song kicks in that is gone, and it’s good old fashioned early Metallica thrash.  They’re also doing something with James vocals that sounds different than a traditional Metallica track.  In fact, there’s several parts of this song that don’t sound a ton like the rest of the album.  It’s not like it sounds like Celine Dion or something, but it’s got a slightly different vibe.  That could be down to this being one of the songs credited to Mustaine.   There is a slower middle part here that sounds like something I’ve heard on a subsequent Metallica album, but I can’t place it.  This whole song threw me off thinking of other things, or “where have I heard that”?   I don’t dislike it, but my thoughts are disjointed because of all the various bits I mentioned above.

No Remorse – This song I was just listening to and not giving any thought as to what to write, that’s always a key a song has drug me in, so I’ll roll with that.  One thing happened through that got me out of it. From 3:49 – 3:53 of the song there was a short guitar sequence that sounds nearly identical to something I know I’ve heard from Iron Maiden.   I enjoyed this a lot, but don’t have a ton of words about it.  I do like the last minute and a half it upped the speed and went faster.  Enjoyed the change there.

Seek & Destroy – If people know anything from this album it’s this track.  I’d wager the most widely known track from Metallica #1.  It gets played at every concert of theirs, and is a big audience participation moment as it usually comes late in the setlist.  I’d wager if you’ve read this far in my post about Kill ‘Em All you know this song too, and I don’t need to explain any of it.  I think part of the reason it’s a big audience song is that the chorus is eminently sing-able.  It doesn’t even require a huge vocal talent to hang with James on this track, it’s well suited for that.  I’m not going to spend a ton of time on the music here, because well, this one’s mostly about the singing and the audience participation for me.  The song has a LOT of repeating in it – mostly the vocals, but damn it’s a fun song.  The excessive repeating I think is why I don’t list it higher on my ranking of songs, but it IS a fun one live.

One thing I did want to say was the greatest version of this I ever saw came some years ago when Metallica did their “xXx” shows for their 30th anniversary.  They got every living person who ever was in Metallica ever (no matter how short a tenure) up there to do something.  Even Dave Mustaine.  The last song on the last night was Seek & Destroy, and they were all bloody up there at once.   That included Jason Newsted, Dave Mustaine, Lloyd Grant, Ron McGovney as well as friends Hugh Tanner & Mark Osequeda.  They ran out of guitars, I saw one guy with a trumpet.   It was the greatest version of that song ever.  I really REALLY wish Metallica would release those xXx shows properly vs the fan bootlegs that are out there.

Metal Militia – This song sounds the most like Mustaine & Megadeth’s early sound on this album than anything else.  Of the four credited Mustaine tracks on this album, this one feels like the one that swings most in that direction.  I mean it wasn’t written solely by him – also James & Lars, so it’s Metallica, but it must have been influenced by Dave more than anything else in its formative stage.  No matter who wrote what, it’s a great track – one of my more favorite thrash tracks from this era.

As for the music, it’s a blisteringly fast end to an album that’s far more thrash than my memories of it was, but then again early on I must have just filed it away as “too fast”. In those days I wasn’t about the blistering fast metal, I liked a bit more melody.  But this is a great track too.  It’s got sound effects as well – actual marching boots and military/war sounds at the end (weapons, etc).  Pink Floyd they’re not, but it’s a nice effect to close out the album.

As I said earlier that digital listen a few days back changed my mind on this one.  My being “meh” about it was part of the reason I stalled writing the next entry in my series.  While I tell the truth about my feelings in these, I’m not ignorant of what kind of reaction saying something negative about a well loved album can bring.  I was struggling with how to write this piece and express ambivalence towards the recording.  However, the digital listen turned me around a bit – odd that in October of 2025, I finally glommed onto this album in a way I never had in the four decades it’s been out (I was 18 when it was originally released).

While I probably will still choose other Metallica albums over this one (I mean come on – Puppets!), this will definitely get more play than it has in the past.  Only really one track I didn’t care for, and even that’s not THAT bad.

Kill ‘Em All is something I probably would have been more into at the time had I paid closer attention.  My bad.  I got there in the end.