Ride the Lightning
 | By Metallica Elektra / Wea, 1990, Audio CD Customer Rating: 806 reviews Recommend |
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Digitally remastered reissue of their 1984 album on a 24 karat gold CD from DCC. From the original master tapes. Booklet includes complete original artwork.
Don't let that classical-guitar-ish opening to "Fight Fire with Fire" fool you — Ride the Lightning packs a heavy-metal wallop. While not as ambitious as the subsequent Master of Puppets, this early Metallica album is indubitably one of their best. Thematically, it explores death and dying from myriad points of view: nuclear war ("Fight Fire with Fire"), electric-chair execution (the title track), and drowning ("Trapped Under Ice"). Interestingly, the best track on this album is probably "Fade to Black," a slower, more introspective song about suicide. There's also "Creeping Death," which remains a concert favorite. An excellent mix of rapid-fire guitar riffs, rip-roaring solos, and singer James Hetfield's trademark growl, this is thrash metal at its finest. Very highly recommended. — Genevieve Williams
Don't let that classical-guitar-ish opening to "Fight Fire with Fire" fool you — Ride the Lightning packs a heavy-metal wallop. While not as ambitious as the subsequent Master of Puppets, this early Metallica album is indubitably one of their best. Thematically, it explores death and dying from myriad points of view: nuclear war ("Fight Fire with Fire"), execution by electric chair (the title track), and drowning ("Trapped Under Ice"). Interestingly, the album's best track is "Fade to Black," a slower, introspective song about suicide. There's also "Creeping Death," which remains a concert favorite. An excellent mix of rapid-fire guitar riffs, rip-roaring solos, and singer James Hetfield's trademark growl, this is thrash metal at its finest. — Genevieve Williams
- Fight Fire with Fire
- Ride the Lightning
- For Whom the Bell Tolls
- Fade to Black
- Trapped Under Ice
- Escape
- Creeping Death
- The Call of Ktulu
Title: Ride the Lightning
Sales Rank: 498 in Music
Artist: Metallica
Label: Elektra / Wea, 1990-10-25, Audio CD, 1 Disc
Format: Original recording remastered
Package Dimensions: 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches, 0.2 pounds
- A classic. Every rock fan should already have it.
- Metallica may have artistically peaked with Master Of Puppets (or maybe Justice), but this is my favorite album by them. It balances the fiery rawness of the debut with the more complex arrangements found on Puppets to create one of metal's defining masterpieces. Anyone who's ever had even a passing interest in metal has owned this album at some point or another.
- Fantastic album
- Ride the Lighting was such an amazing album. There were many great songs on this album, such as Escape with it's great chorus line, the title track with its great intro, Klutu with the great reprise at the end, but the real highlight of this album is Fade to Black. Fade to Black is simply one of the greatest metal… More reviews
- A great gem occassionally lost in the shadows
- Talk of Metallica albums usually passes over "Ride the Lightning"; you hear how great "Master of Puppets" is, the transition that was "the black album" and general disgust at "St. Anger." The truth is, without "Ride the Lightning," we never would have seen any of the others.
"Ride the Lightning" was Metallica's sophomore album,… More reviews
- 4 1/2 stars out of 5
- This was a leap and bounds advance forward for Metallica in only 1 year time, but this album is not quite perfect people. With only 8 tracks on an album everything has to be perfect. While songs like "Trapped Under Ice", "Escape", and "Creeping Death" are very good, they aren't great. The highlights are the first 4 songs. More reviews
- one of the four greatest Heavy Metal album of all-time
- I don't know exactly where this album would rank on some kind of official list or a huge vote for the top 10 Heavy Metal albums, but on my website I ranked this timeless masterpiece 3rd behind Reign In Blood. I did have a really hard time deciding if it should be 2nd or 3rd though. Anyway, enough about that, here is my review.
FIGHT FIRE WITH… More reviews
