In honor of Metallica’s Kill’ Em All album turning 30, VH1 asked Eddie Trunk to comment on the band’s seminal debut.
Here is what he had to say:
“I was just starting out in radio doing a metal show in NJ. I knew Jonny Z who owned Megaforce Records from a flea market store he had. He drove to my radio studio one night asking me if I would please take a chance and play this band nobody would touch on my radio show called Metallica. He insisted it would be huge one day and asked me to give it a shot since no radio would touch it. I wish I could say I heard the future, but in all honesty I wasn’t sure what I heard. The music I liked had more melody and it sounded very harsh and extreme for my tastes. I wasn’t so sure about the tempos and vocals but it had an energy I liked. You must remember in 1983 there wasn’t much that sounded like that.
Today Metallica is mainstream. Back then they were anything but! Along with Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax, it helped usher in and introduce a whole new style of metal. Thrash/speed metal was born with those early releases and Kill ‘Em All was at the forefront. The opening of Hit the Lights, just this wall of noise and the drums, and then the way it kicks in so intensely to me just screams ‘things are about to get way more interesting in metal.’ It forced the established bands of the time to take notice and realize there was an audience for a more extreme style of metal. I think history will show it to be one of the most pivotal groundbreaking albums, for sure.”
To read what others had to say including: Rob Halford, Jason Newsted, Scott Ian, Kerry King, Joe Satriani and others, click here.
10 Responses
I was never a fan of kill em all. METALLICA begins with me on ride the lightning, which I had first and I still feel it was 100 times superior in songs and sound.
Have to disagree Doug, Lightning and Master both follow a formula. Fast song then political song slow one with fast ending to end side one. Side 2: Fastest song then instrumental commercial sounding song then a fast one. Something like that. KEA is what METTALLICA always should have been. Loud pounding songs with great riffs. It all got way too polished after that. Still great music and singing. KEA was the metal heads METTALICA while JUSTICE and all that followed is everyones METTALICA. In the gym, I want KEA , at YANKEE Stadium and MET LIFE, its BLACK album. I get it, they ve evolved but I just prefered it when they arrived. Maybe it was just better to be 10 than it is 40.
well, read the other comments ride the lightning wins!!!
RTL is my fav but Kill Em All is a close 2nd!
Imagine spelling Metallica: Mettallica. The first LP blows….it got no play for good reason…just noise. The second & third broke them huge.
R u kidding….Kill Em All is 2nd only to Ride!
RTL was the one when I 1st heard them .
My friends and I listen to it over and over , every single day .
KEA is awesome but dosent compare to RTL or, Master for that matter….. Still, I stopped enjoying their material( like many) after IJFA . They became a different sounding band and way to polished, radio songs with no depth . DM, people say, went back to their roots but for me the only thing that was similar was the length of the songs other than that DM was complete garbage .
Still waiting for a us tour where they play one of their 1st 3 in its entirety . Then,I will go see them once again…..
It was awesome hearing that they did KEA at that festival last month….
I remember hearing KEA and admittedly thinking WTF? Never thought these guys would go anywhere period. Then I heard RTL and was blown away. Master is still the pinnacle for me. I hated AJFA because the production was just so lousy, absolutely terrible. And then it all went downhill for me after that.
Ride the Lightning was my first exposure to Metallica. Ten seconds into Trapped Under Ice I was hooked. That being said my next purchase was Kill ‘Em All and it became and still is my favorite by them, and still one of my top ten albums ever. Not to take away from RTL or MOP (GREAT albums), but my personal preference is KEA. It was so raw, so full of energy and this was a band which was telling the world that they had something to say, that they had something to prove. Thirty years later, I still can’t be behind the wheel of my car with the instrumental part of No Remorse blaring and my foot not involuntarily push down on the gas just a little harder.