Ride the Lightning | Through the Shattered Lens

Metallica.

Love them or hate them there’s really no middle-ground when it comes to one of the Big Four of thrash metal. You either love the band even through their dabbling into hard rock and the Bob Rock-era or you hate them for the perceived selling out and the Bob Rock-era. You ask any Metallica fan and they would pretty much agree that their third album, Master of Puppets, was the band at it’s peak. There would be some debate on whether the Black Album was where the band began to alienate some of it’s earliest fans, but that’s not what we’re here for.

We are here for the latest “Song of the Day” and it’s from their second full-length album, Ride the Lightning. The song is the band’s very first power ballad and follows the album’s theme and exploration of death. Where the album’s title took on the concept of death by electric chair the song chosen this time around is about the band’s exploration of the concept of suicide.

Yes, this was the song that the band had gotten into hot water for it’s suicidal lyrics which purportedly led to teens offing themselves after listening to it constantly. What critics of the song failed to realize was just how much teens at the time the song came out saw the song as therapeutic. They related to the song and used it as an outlet for their own alienation and depression.

Just like it’s subject matter it begins with a melancholy melody that gives a glimpse into the singer’s mindset. It’s not the typical fast playing many have associated with thrash, but that arrives soon enough as the song finishes off it’s vocals with a fade out that leads into Kirk Hammett’s 2-minute guitar solo that ultimately fades out as well…

The song that critics of metal gets wrong then and continues to even now is the classic “Fade to Black”.

Fade to Black

Life it seems, will fade away
Drifting further every day
Getting lost within myself
Nothing matters no one else
I have lost the will to live
Simply nothing more to give
There is nothing more for me
Need the end to set me free

Things not what they used to be
Missing one inside of me
Deathly lost, this Can’t be real
Cannot stand this hell I feel
Emptiness is filling me
To the point of agony
Growing darkness taking dawn
I was me, but now he’s gone

No one but me can save myself, but it’s too late
Now, I can’t think, think why I should even try
Yesterday seems as though it never existed
Death Greets me warm, now I will just say goodbye

Bye…

(guitar solo)

Great Guitar Solos Series

It took awhile but Metallica has finally made another appearance in the “song of the day” feature. This time around they return with one of their best songs. A song which has become iconic of early-Metallica amongst their most die-hard fans. The song is “For Whom the Bell Tolls”.

This track comes in third on the band’s second album and was inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s 1940 novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. It is also the song which contains one of the best opening riffs in metal history. A riff not born from lead guitarist Kirk Hammett’s axe, but from it’s bassist Cliff Burton. This opening riff shows Cliff Burton at his best and the fact that people continue to mistake the riff as guitar instead of bass just shows how talented the man was.

This song is all about Burton’s work on the bass with Hetfield supplying the vocals and Hammett’s lead guitar work almost behaving like an accompaniment. It is no wonder that whenever talk comes around as to who is the best metal bassist (or just rock bassist) ever no discussion could ever be considered credible if Cliff Burton’s name was not included.

While Burton died just two years after the single’s release while th eband was on tour in Sweden his contribution as both writer and composer to this song will forever cement his legacy amongst metal and music fans for countless generations.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Make his fight on the hills in the early day
Constant chill deep inside
Shouting gun, on they run through the endless grey
On they fight, for they are right, yes, but who’s to say?

For a hill, men would kill, why? They do not know
Stiffened wounds test their pride
Men of five, still alive through the raging glow
Gone insane from the pain that they surely know

For whom the bell tolls
Time marches on
For whom the bell tolls

Take a look to the sky just before you die
It is the last time you will
Blackened roar massive roar fills the crumbling sky
Shattered goal fills his soul with a ruthless cry

Stranger now, are his eyes, to this mystery
He hears the silence so loud
Crack of dawn, all is gone except the will to be
Now they see, what will be, blinded eyes to see

For whom the bell tolls
Time marches on
For whom the bell tolls