The Batlord

I love all Metallica's eighties materiel, but Kill 'Em All is the one I keep coming back to for some reason. It's certainly not their most accomplished, or their most consistent--although I still like pretty much everything on it--but it's got a youthful energy and raw power that is everything that eighties metal should be. I see this as just as much a trad metal album as a thrash album--the point at which the torch was passed. The hardcore influences blend perfectly with those ten-ton Diamond Head riffs in a way that keeps me hitting the replay button as soon as the album is over.

And "Seek and Destroy" is one of the high points of Western civilization.

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