Metallica: Kill ‘Em All - Ranking Every Song Worst To Best

10. Phantom Lord

No matter what happened on this countdown, something had to come down to the bottom spot. Even with a record as solid as this, it almost pains me to even put a song like Phantom Lord this low. Why? Because the riffs in here are able to go toe to toe with some of the greatest metal out there, thrash or otherwise.

Opening with a strange keyboard chord, the entire allure of this song is a lot more sinister than the rest of the album, with James' voice settling into a devilish growl in the chorus. When you look at the actual construction of the song, this feels much more indebted to the NWOBHM bands of old than anything that would be recognized as Metallica later down the line.

While Metallica themselves would stop sounding like Metallica around the Load era, this song feels more like the result of a jam session, even sprinkling in Dave Mustaine's leftover riffs for the final breakdown. Compared to the other songs on this record, this feels like you can actually see them in the garage hashing things out before they even went into the studio. This could be considered thrash by numbers, but even the base level thrash is rarely a bad thing.