10 Greatest Metallica Riffs EVER
8. Four Horsemen
When Metallica first started to put their songs together, thrash metal didn't really have a name, much less a genre of music to call its own.
At the turn of the decade, most of the music that was bubbling up from the heavy metal underground was usually just pegged as kids who were trying to piggyback off of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal like Diamond Head and Angel Witch. Though you could see those influences laced throughout Metallica's work, The Four Horsemen was the start of something else entirely.
Coming as one of the first songs off of Kill Em All, this was the start of something far different than what you would get from something like Iron Maiden. It's almost strange to think of this tune as a progenitor of thrash due to how different it is, with its swing rhythm and the carbon copy of Sweet Home Alabama in the breakdown. Even with the sudden tempo shifts and different freakouts from the bass and guitars, the main riff has kept a healthy shelf life through the years.
As opposed to the more sophomoric writing across the first record, this was the first song that showed that thrash could be taken seriously, far from the unprofessional punk rock version of metal. Metallica helped launch an entire subgenre of metal with Kill Em All, and songs like this showed that they were just getting started.