Kill 'Em All Review

Kill 'Em All is Metallica's first album, released July 25, 1983 on Megaforce Records.

Released in 1983, Kill 'Em All was the first album to completely feature everything that made the nascent Bay Area thrash metal scene so unique (Metallica actually admit to it being influenced a lot by "The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal"). The record's release saw many imitators and followers release albums in its wake, and set the band that made it on the path to "world domination", as drummer Lars Ulrich would put it in the following year.

The album reaches furious speeds on every track (discounting the Cliff Burton bass solo "(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth"), a testament to the band's early influences: Diamond Head, Motörhead and Venom, all English bands who combined the heaviness and technicality of Black Sabbath with the speed and aggression of punk rock. This made the band a total anomaly in the early 1980s heavy metal scene in the USA. The band wear their influences on their sleeve, and shades of tracks like Diamond Head's "Dead Reckoning" can be heard in "Seek & Destroy".

When Metallica settled on a lineup originally, the band featured James Hetfield (guitar/vocals), Lars Ulrich (drums), Ron McGovney (bass) and Dave Mustaine (lead guitar). Due to tensions between McGovney and Mustaine, McGovney left the band. Castro Valley-born bassist Cliff Burton was recruited as a replacement, and Metallica's first "classic" lineup was forged. However, there was also considerable tension between Mustaine and the rest of the band (particularly Hetfield), which resulted in him being sacked in early 1983, just prior to the recording of Kill 'Em All - he went on to form the band Megadeth, who themselves would later achieve multi-million selling success. After Mustaine's departure, Metallica recruited Kirk Hammett, Exodus guitarist and one-time student of guitar legend Joe Satriani, whisking him into the studio barely a month after joining to record the album.

Mustaine and Hetfield were infamously opposed on many occasions, with Mustaine later blaming the rivalry on the fact that "there were too many personalities" in the band. These tensions came to a head with a number of things: the first is an alleged fist-fight that broke out between Mustaine and Hetfield, after Mustaine accused Hetfield of kicking his dog. The other was slightly more serious, with Hetfield and Ulrich blaming Dave's firing on his alcohol problem: while Mustaine would vehemently deny this, his struggles with addiction through his later career certainly add some weight to Metallica's claims. Some Megadeth fans have cried foul over this, citing Hetfield's 2001 rehabilitation for alcoholism as hypocrisy, asking why the band didn't send Dave to Alcoholics Anonymous; Mustaine himself addressed this point during a conversation with Ulrich in Metallica's 2004 movie Some Kind Of Monster.

Despite their differences, Mustaine's contribution to the early years of Metallica was not neglected as he received four co-writing credits on Kill 'Em All. One song, "The Four Horsemen" was originally written by Mustaine and titled "The Mechanix". It was performed at many early Metallica shows. Following Mustaine's exit, Hetfield and Ulrich added a mid-paced, melodic middle section. Hetfield also wrote new lyrics and the band renamed it The Four Horsemen. Mustaine kept the faster paced original version of the song, dropped the "The" from the title, and included it on the first Megadeth album, Killing Is My Business... And Business Is Good!. Mustaine's other writing credits are for the songs "Jump in the Fire", "Phantom Lord" and "Metal Militia".

The band would create minor controversy in the Bay Area scene and the underground rock press at the time for their proposed title for their debut album. The band initially planned to call it Metal Up Your Ass, and it would boast a cover featuring a toilet bowl with a hand clutching a dagger emerging from it. The band's label urged them to change this, so they agreed, switching to the marginally less-offensive Kill 'Em All, with a cover featuring the shadow of a hand letting go of a bloodied sledgehammer. Cliff Burton is credited with coming up with the name Kill 'Em All (referring to timid record distributors) as a response to the whole situation.