Listen Now
For the second full-band discography of Light the Sky Podcast, we decided to cover metal legends Metallica. Episode 14 covers the 1983 landmark debut album “Kill ’em All” by the Bay Area trash/heavy metal band.
Subscribe, Rate, and Review:
Quick Reviews
Mark A great discovery album here – some overlooked gems that greatly foreshadow what’s to come.
Chris Meat and potatoes, but with hooky riffing that you wouldn’t expect from this type of band (considering their ages at the time), especially at this stage, which helps elevate it above some of their contemporaries.
Alex Top 3 Metallica album. Perfect trash and amazing guitar tones. Fav tracks “The Four Horsemen”, “Jump in the Fire.”
Kevin Great moments surrounded by a lot of wheedle-wheedle.
Love It or Flush It
| M | C | A | K | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Hit the Lights" | 4:17 | L | L | L | L | |
| 2 | "The Four Horsemen" | 7:13 | L | B | B | B | |
| 3 | "Motorbreath" | 3:08 | T | L | L | F | |
| 4 | "Jump in the Fire" | 4:42 | L | L | L | L | |
| 5 | "(Anesthesia)-Pulling Teeth" | 4:15 | F | L | F | T | |
| 6 | "Whiplash" | 4:09 | F | T | L | F | |
| 7 | "Phantom Lord" | 5:02 | B | L | L | L | |
| 8 | "No Remorse" | 6:27 | L | L | L | L | |
| 9 | "Seek & Destroy" | 6:56 | L | L | B | L | |
| 10 | "Metal Militia" | 5:11 | L | F | T | F |
Love It or Flush It Legend
L = Love. As many as you like.
F = Flush. Must flush at least one track per album.
B = Buy. Purchased for the ultimate LTS “Best Of” playlist for each of us. One per album.
T = Terminate. Should have never even existed. One per album.
The Rules
Each of us must Love, Flush, Buy, and Terminate AT LEAST ONE track on an album, no matter how great or terrible the album is. Whoever wins the “7 for the Buy” section gets an extra Buy or Terminate to use on the album. Because Chris hosts this section and thus cannot win, he gets an extra Buy or Terminate every 4 albums.
Album Information
Kill ‘Em All is the debut studio album by American heavy metal band Metallica, released on July 25, 1983,[1] through independent label Megaforce Records. Metallica began by playing shows in local clubs in Los Angeles. They recorded several demos to gain attention from club owners and eventually relocated to San Francisco to secure the services of bassist Cliff Burton. The group’s No Life ’til Leather demo tape (1982) was noticed by Megaforce label head Jon Zazula, who signed them and provided a budget of $15,000 for recording. The album was recorded in May with producer Paul Curcio at the Music America Studios in Rochester, New York. It was originally intended to be titled Metal Up Your Ass, with cover art featuring a hand clutching a dagger emerging from a toilet bowl. The band was asked to change the name because distributors feared that releasing an album with such an offensive title and artwork would diminish its chances of commercial success.
Metallica promoted the album on the two-month co-headlining Kill ‘Em All for One tour with English heavy metal band Raven in the US. The album also generated two singles: “Whiplash” and “Jump in the Fire“. Although the initial shipment was 15,000 copies in the US, the album sold 60,000 copies worldwide by the end of Metallica’s Seven Dates of Hell European tour in 1984. The album did not enter the Billboard 200 until 1986, when it peaked at number 155, following Metallica’s commercial success with its third studio album, Master of Puppets; the 1988 Elektra reissue peaked at number 120. Kill ‘Em All was critically praised at the time of its release and has since been regarded as a groundbreaking album for thrash metal, because of its precise musicianship, which fuses new wave of British heavy metal riffs with hardcore punk tempos. It was also retrospectively placed on a few publications’ best album lists. The album’s musical approach and lyrics were markedly different from rock’s mainstream of the early 1980s and inspired a number of bands who followed in similar manner. It was certified 3× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1999 for shipping three million copies in the United States.
