your favourite Metallica album of the 1980s?

your fave Metallica album of the 1980s?

  • Kill 'Em All

    Votes: 1 3.8%
  • Ride The Lightning

    Votes: 10 38.5%
  • Master Of Puppets

    Votes: 8 30.8%
  • ...And Justice for All

    Votes: 7 26.9%

  • Total voters
    26
Ride 'Em  All, Master!
Voted for Ride the Lightning.
 
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Puppets.

Probably not a lot of street cred for saying it, but the songs are better all round than the other albums. All are great albums obviously
 
Ride, Puppets and Justice are all nearly flawless but Justice has always been my favourite. I think I'll give Ride second place because Puppets has some stuff I'm not keen on. KEA ain't bad but the songs just don't compare.
 
AJFA lovers please enlighten me: what´s so great about the album? To me it was the hardest of their classic albums to get into and then only a few songs: Blackened, title track and One. The rest of the material bores the hell out of me.
 
AJFA lovers please enlighten me: what´s so great about the album? To me it was the hardest of their classic albums to get into and then only a few songs: Blackened, title track and One. The rest of the material bores the hell out of me.
It's hard to find any fault from AJFA aside from the mixing imo. The songs are interesting (read: proggy and contain many different movements), the lyrics are mostly very good (opinion), and Kirk plays many of his best solos (also just my opinion). The riffing is also top tier, and last but certainly not least, Lars is definitely at his peak here.
 
AJFA lovers please enlighten me: what´s so great about the album? To me it was the hardest of their classic albums to get into and then only a few songs: Blackened, title track and One. The rest of the material bores the hell out of me.

For me, there are several reasons.

First of all, in general, it's probably the Big 4 album (along with Anthrax's Persistence of Time) closest to the general idea of "prog-thrash" (like Toxik, Heathen, Coroner, Watchtower, Mekong Delta, latter-era Dark Angel and so on), a genre I have a particular soft spot for. That means epic songs (not unlike Maiden, in my book), often multipart and the band pushing itself to the limit (yep, I do think AJFA is the most "technical" of all Metallica albums - even Lars and Kirk, the most limited members of the band, seem to me to be really trying to be the best here).
You could say that some of these aspects were already present on MoP (the title track, Disposable Heroes), but it is AJFA that has this attitude soaked in its bones, with the title track, Blackened, One hitting you right in the face in the beginning of the album and Shortest Straw and especially Frayed Ends supporting it with its peculiar weirdness in the latter half. At least IMHO.

But that's not the only reason - I also find them to be exceptionally adept at making the music approachable here. I mean, this is the album before the breakthrough, right? It shows, because they are already learning how to make the songs really catchy, even in such a monster of epicness and weird metres (for them, Dream Theater this is not). The "choruses" (probably not always technically a chorus, but you know what I mean) to the title track, Blackened, One and the overall catchiness of even the verses of Eye of the Beholder, One and the irresistible stutter of the AJFA verse, as well as the vocal melodies of Dyers Eve... these all are in my book among the most "Beatlesque" of Metallica attempts - and this is already the most "Beatlesque" of all thrash (and most metal) bands.
It is a certain je ne sais quoi that doesn't really make sense in analysis - in general we shoud probably say that Metallica trying to be catchy is Escape, shouldn't we? But it's not, this is their own charm, and it's honestly rather hard to describe for me.

Also, the lyrics. Now, anyone over 15 shouldn't probably listen to Metallica (or a lot of metal bands in general) for their lyrics and not just because of the "brain-pain-insane" heinous and inane Hetfield train, but on AJFA I find these to be probably at their most cerebral (although "Independence Ltd.", with how he sings it as well shows Hetfield to be the American rube always was, I admit) and poetic.

I mean, already at the very start, Blackened is an opener on an altogether different level than "Cannot kill the battery!" The title track, while being possibly a tad too didactic, would also pack a serious punch on its lyrics alone. The channeling of Paul Gerhard in TLITD ("When a man lies, he murders some part of the world...") is probably the most thoughtful the band has ever been. The pure, unadulterated psychological horror of One is truly effective as an idea and in its execution.
As a whole, it helps the album to feel grander than the rest.

And to be completely honest - there's also just a personal preference, sometimes. For example, To Live Is to Die may be a mishmash of ideas and it may seem plodding to many, but for some inexplicable reason I find it to be much more enjoyable and tolerable than Orion - I don't know what it is with the latter, I should for all intents and purposes love that piece, but I have always found it incredibly boring, always checking the time remaning when I'm about two thirds through. Something just doesn't hit me right about that one. TLITD, while being even longer, never annoyed me this way, so it's tied with Call of Ktulu as the more atmospheric and tolerable choice of a Tullica Instrumental TM.
And in that same regard - I can't stand Leper Messiah - I find it to be slow and sluggish (heh, you realize my favourite 90's album by them is ReLoad? Weird, right?) and it completely kills the momentum of the MoP album for me. Its counterpart - Harvester of Sorrow - is much more palatable for me. Combined with the ridiculous intro to Damage... I have a serious problem with some of the flaws of MoP, for example, whereas AJFA lacks these missteps.

To me, AJFA is more than the sum of its parts... and the sum of its parts is already pretty great, with at least 4 of these tracks being among my most replayed Tullica tracks overall (Blackened, AJFA, One, Dyers Eve).

But what do I know? I have also never been a fan of KEA, for that matter.
 
I voted for KEA. Was really almost a tie between KEA and MOP, but KEA has a raw aggressive sound that just barely edges out the near perfection of MOP. For me KEA>=MOP>RTL>AJFA.
 
Master of Puppets, largely due to Sanitarium, Orion and the great Hetfield solo in the title track. However most of their music don't really appeal to me. I prefer beautiful guitar melodies over heavy/fast riffs and luckily Iron Maiden has lots of them. It's no wonder I find myself listening to Iron Maiden most of the time when I intend to listen some music.
 
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