In a recent chat with KCAL 96.7 radio station, Accept’s Mark Tornillo picked his favorite Metallica album. The thing is, he didn’t understand it the first time it came out.
The interviewer said he and his friend couldn’t decide between the best thrash metal albums, ‘Ride The Lightning’ or ‘Master Of Puppets,’ so the rocker was asked to pick one of the two.
“Wow, that’s tough, that’s really tough because I like them both,” he said. “I like ‘Kill ‘Em All’ too. At the time I didn’t understand it, and now when I hear it it’s like, ‘God damn, they were ahead of their time.’ Crazy. I’d have to say ‘Ride The Lightning.’ ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls,’ boom. I mean I like ‘Master [Of Puppets]’ too. So that’s like comparing apples and oranges.”
Last year Metallica celebrated the 40th anniversary of ‘Kill ‘Em All.’ Kirk Hammett chatted with 93.3 WMMR about his ‘relationship’ with the songs from the band’s first two albums, ‘Kill ‘Em All’ and ‘Ride The Lightning.’
“Well, when I listen to those tracks, I’m just kind of blown away when I look back,” the guitarist explained. “We were all so young, but we had a very clear vision of what we wanted to do, what we wanted to sound like, how we wanted to execute things, the type of songs we wanted to write. I mean, for as young as we [were], we all had a collective vision and we knew exactly what we wanted, and what we wanted and what we were chasing was very unique.”
“The fact that we got so much done at such a young age just blows me away, because it seems like we had something on our sides — we had some sort of energy, or God was smiling down on us or the universe was pushing us. And thank God, because those two albums, ‘Kill ‘Em All’ and ‘Ride The Lightning’, when they came out, there was nothing like it. And I’m really proud of that,” Hammett added.
Originally released on July 25, 1983, through Megaforce Records, ‘Kill ‘Em All’ was recorded in just two weeks on a small budget in upstate New York. They only pressed 1,500 copies at first, but after signing with Elektra Records in 1984, the album was reissued and has since sold over three million copies.
The original title for ‘Kill ‘Em All’ was ‘Metal Up Your Ass.’
