Birth School Metallica Death - Vol I (16 page)

As was normal for the time, the mixing of Metallica’s first professional recordings was overseen by Curcio and Bubacz. But when Johnny Zazula heard the initial mix of an album the costs of which had yet to be paid, he was displeased. To his ear, Metallica’s sound as captured in Music America studios was unbalanced: the guitars were too low in the mix while the drums were too loud. Producer and engineer were instructed to return to the mixing desk and reset the sound in order that Hetfield’s already forensic multi-layered guitars feature with greater prominence. ‘So that’s what we did,’ recalls the engineer, adding that this direction ‘wasn’t positive [and] wasn’t negative’, rather it was merely a case of ‘the guitars aren’t loud enough’.

Thirty years after the fact, Bubacz says that the songs that comprise Metallica’s debut album do not amount to ‘one of his best recording efforts. In fact,’ he says, ‘I’m always a little bit disappointed when I hear it years later.’ Despite this, the engineer surmises his experiences in the spring of 1983 as being ‘a good experience’, a thing that ‘worked out fine’.

From the point of view of Metallica themselves, however, the recording of their debut album might have given the appearance of being a process where compromise came stacked on compromise. The group’s members found themselves ignominiously excluded from the process of remixing their own songs, a state of affairs that must have been jarring for a union that even in 1983 was unyielding with regard its own creative defiance. Famously, the group had wanted their first album to be titled ‘Metal Up Your Ass’, a decision that was vetoed by US distributors who were fearful that record shops in many states of what was then, and in many cases still is, a conservative nation would refuse to stock such an item. Upon hearing this news, Cliff Burton damned the purveyors of this compromise with the words ‘Fuck those fuckers’ and surmised that the group, or at least someone, should just ‘kill ’em all’. With these three words the bass player provided
the band with an alternative title for their first record. This much is known by Metallica fans the world over. What is less often considered is the worth of the group’s original idea. To accompany the album as it was originally to be titled, its creators envisioned a front cover featuring an image of a man sat on a toilet, with a metal spike emerging from the bowl and penetrating his anus. The group’s creative vision may have been neutered by people interested in money rather than art, but this does not mean that in being censored in this way Metallica were not saved from the very people from whom in this instance they required protection: themselves.

Metallica were formally introduced to the world at large when
Kill ’Em All
was released on July 25, 1983, just shy of two months after the completion of its recording sessions. In place of the group’s awful original idea for their cover artwork, instead record store browsers were met with a stark image of a lump-hammer strewn carelessly on a ceramic floor, a pool of blood gathering around this bluntest of instruments. While adhering to the metal clichés of cruelty and physical threat, the cover artwork that accompanies
Kill ’Em All
is effective in its starkness and simplicity, and stands in contrast to the more over-the-top covers favoured by metal bands of the day.

On the reverse side of the sleeve, the group photo finds the quartet of young musicians attempting to present themselves as street thugs. In this they fall some way short of their marker. For while it is possible to imagine a figure such as, say, Lemmy emerging from the womb dressed entirely in black, smoking a Marlboro red, his first actions on this earth being the act of slapping the doctor in the delivery room, as pictured on their first album Metallica resemble lion cubs more than kings of the jungle. Particularly unconvincing is Lars Ulrich’s bum-fluff moustache and Hetfield’s
teenage acne. But despite the hesitant impression given by a group trying too hard to appear like the kind of men they desire, or imagine, themselves to be, in one sense the photograph of Metallica chosen to represent the group on
Kill ’Em All
is both resolute and striking. From the shining leather of Judas Priest to the spandex of Iron Maiden, at a time when even the most unreconstructed of heavy metal bands – the kind of groups who were not afforded the attentions of MTV and FM radio – tended to present themselves in a stylised and considered way, here Metallica stand in what appear not only to be the clothes they woke up in that morning, but also the same clothes they went to bed in the night before (if indeed they went to bed at all). In this sense, the group are portrayed in a manner as unvarnished as the music they made.

It is also to its authors’ credit that Metallica’s debut album has about it a rather counter-intuitive quality. With regard to the relationship that exists between songs as originally submitted in demo form and then as refashioned on a debut album, it is the norm that, come the second visitation, the tracks are given polish and shine, their rough edges sanded down with studio trickery and an abundance of professional sleights of hand. With
Kill ’Em All
, though, this process was placed on its head.

As with
No Life ’Til Leather, Kill ’Em All
begins with the track ‘Hit the Lights’, and immediately the difference between Metallica as heard on demo and the group as represented on vinyl becomes apparent. A telling quality with young groups is not so much how these acts handle their strengths, but rather how they deal with what they perceive to be their weaknesses. There is no doubt that the one aspect of the group’s music about which Metallica (and Hetfield especially) was most sensitive and unsure were the vocals. Evidence of this can be heard with particular emphasis on ‘Hit the Lights’ as represented on
No Life ’Til Leather
, where Hetfield’s voice comes shrouded to the point of obfuscation by reverb. On the same song on
Kill ’Em
All
, the voice that announces the questionable opening couplet, ‘No life ’til leather, we are gonna kick some ass tonight’, is not only prominent in the mix but is also unadorned by anything that resembles studio trickery. In later years Hetfield would dismiss his vocal contributions to Metallica’s first four albums as amounting to nothing more than ‘yelling in key’, and while this may in essence be true his evaluation serves to undermine the effectiveness of such a strategy as it related to his band’s music at this time. With regard to
Kill ’Em All
there is no doubt that, despite his own internal misgivings, the front man’s voice resonates with both clarity and authority. Much of this authority is derived from the sincerity of many of the words that are being sung. On ‘Whiplash’, after describing a Metallica concert as being a site populated by people ‘gathered here to maim and kill’, the singer reveals to the listener that the reason for this is because ‘this is what we choose.’ Even as early as 1983, the notion that Hetfield viewed life as something to be lived either with liberty or not at all was already finding some form of expression.

Despite its descriptions of feral gatherings of young men who ‘bang [their] heads against the stage like [they] never did before’, by the standards of today
Kill ’Em All
is not a particularly heavy album. Part of the reason for this is that in setting the standard for what would soon enough come to be termed ‘thrash metal’, Metallica punched holes in walls through which other groups would follow with perhaps a more determined singularity of purpose (Slayer being the prime example). But while the band’s debut album does not, as metal parlance would have it, shift much air, what it does do is announce its presence with a level of precision and clarity that is at times forensic. Metallica may have disdained Paul Curcio’s role as producer, but to the outside ear at least the stridency and immediacy of Metallica’s sound as represented on their first album serves the band well. For their own part, no small part of this credit should go to the musicians themselves. For while
the production and engineering of the tracks might cause a lesser band to sound brittle and one-dimensional, Metallica’s innate sense of musicality and melody means that their compositions actually benefit from the rather stark manner in which they are presented. Yet another by-product of the album’s sound is that the production enhances rather than obscures the group’s wild and compelling energy. Even in the short time that had elapsed since the ejection of Dave Mustaine, there were noticeable signs of progression. ‘The Mechanix’, with its double-entendre-laden lyric, was reworked as ‘The Four Horsemen’. The new lyric – a fairly stock account of the coming of the four horsemen of the apocalypse that somehow manages to wrongly identify one of the riders (‘Time’ being nominated as one of the quartet, in place of ‘War’) – is not particularly impressive or even greatly superior to its predecessor; its subject matter is more fitting for a band whose energy at this time equated more to anger and intensity than it did to anything related to sex. Elsewhere the sheer chutzpah displayed by the decision to include on the album a bass solo in the form of Burton’s much discussed ‘Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)’ showed that when it came to displaying a taste for the unusual Metallica had chops to spare. However, the rarely spoken truth about this inclusion is that aside from what might rather harshly be described as the song’s ‘novelty value’, an innovative bass solo is not as interesting as a good song. But when
Kill ’Em All
does take flight, it does so in soaring fashion. Even thirty years on, listening to the crisp-as-lightning pneumatic drill riff that precedes the opening lines of ‘Whiplash’ is exhilarating.

‘From start to finish it’s a complete package,’ says Kirk Hammett. ‘It’s young, raw, obnoxious, loud, fast, energetic, and inspirational, and everything in between. When it came out, it was the achievement of our lives. We could hold it and show people and go, “Hey, look, we made an album! We’re on vinyl.” It was a great feeling.’

‘I remember the first time I heard
Kill ’Em All
, I thought, “Blimey, this is a bit different”,’ recalls English rock journalist Malcolm Dome, who reviewed the collection for
Kerrang!
‘To me, it was Venom played by superior musicians. Musically, they were a better band than Venom. You could hear Motörhead in there as well. You could hear Diamond Head in there, and you could hear Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. You could hear all those traditional things in the make-up of the album. But clearly they were doing something a bit different. Now, you look back and listen to it and think, “Well, it’s not really that fast at all.” But at the time it seemed to have an incredibly fast pace. And also, the fact is, they had really good songs as well: they had a really good sense of structure, really good melodies, and although the production was comparatively non-existent, what that meant is that it allowed the band space in which to breathe. So to this day it sounds like a very sharp record.’

At the time the effect must have been piercing. While the once street-tough bands who populated the Los Angeles metal scene were preparing to tousle up their hair and water down their sound in preparation for an assault on the mainstream, here was an album released by a band whose hands were unlikely to ever uncap a can of hairspray (or deodorant, for that matter). For anyone paying attention, it would soon become clear that battles lines were being drawn between those who opted for a form of hard rock that often amounted to little more than pop music played loud, and a sterner form that required – in fact, insisted upon – greater commitment from the listener. In terms of musical circumstances not all of which were under their control, Metallica already represented a black flag raised high, around which adherents might gather to salute. Not only did they serve as standard-bearers for those whose musical tastes ran to groups with little mind for compromise, but they were also the first American heavy metal band to take the influence of
European groups and translate this into a new form.

But while it is certain that
Kill ’Em All
was a compelling calling card, what is equally sure is that in the summer of 1983 few rallied to their cause.

When Johnny Z had invited the group to New York just months earlier, his plans, such as they were, had been to secure for them a record deal. Quite what Zazula had in mind regarding this pursuit is unclear, but while his endeavours as a small-change (although in time undeniably important) tri-state metal hustler were admirable enough, it is unlikely that his work on the ground in the name of the musical underground went noticed by the men with expense accounts and corner offices of the major record labels of the United States. Johnny Z found that his enthusiasm for Metallica was not shared by the American music industry at large.

‘I’d been all over to the record companies and they laughed in my face,’ he recalled. ‘They told me I was crazy, or said, “Please don’t play this.” Or just, “We don’t want to see you.”’

With a bill for recording costs from Music America Studios yet to be paid in full and no takers for
Kill ’Em All
from either major record labels or significantly sized independent imprints, the problems faced by Zazula were mounting like the clouds of a coming storm. The reality of his circumstances did not make for easy reading: he had a criminal record, a young child, and an unruly band for whom he was suddenly responsible.