10 Perfect Metal Albums With Only One Bad Song

After Metallica got their chops down with Kill Em All, it was time for them to make their case for the kings of thrash metal.

Once the rest of the Bay Area thrash scene started to make their own stabs at the big time, Metallica grew up on the course of one album, with Ride the Lightning being one of their few masterpieces next to Master of Puppets. So when you have an album that's classic from back to front, having a song that just exists feels like a missed opportunity.

That's because Escape was never really supposed to be on the album in the first place. As the band were finalizing the track listing for the album, Lars Ulrich was told by the record company that they wanted one more song that could potentially break them to radio. At first the band were annoyed, but since it's a good move to do what your boss tells you, they relented and made a track that sounds like something between the darker side of Thin Lizzy and Black Sabbath.

To this day, most of the band just forgets that Escape exists, just dumping it onto the track listing and never playing it again until it came time for them to play Ride the Lightning in full for the album's anniversary. This could be a masterpiece by most other metal band's standards, but putting it next to a song like Fade to Black is the absolute worst way to hear this song.