10 Rock Bands That Completely Avoided The Sophomore Slump

When Metallica first started to get the ball rolling, metal listeners were still coming to grips with what they were hearing. Though Kill Em All firmly set the benchmark for what thrash metal would be later down the line, it's hard to really see where these metal legends would be going afterwards. However, even on their second step up, Metallica were looking to bypass thrash altogether.

Across Ride the Lightning, it's clear that the band started to grow up with the arrival of Cliff Burton, whose brilliant arranging and way with melody is all over this album. While there are a few riffs from the Dave Mustaine days on songs like the title track, the best of the bunch is when they decided to switch up their traditional formula. For as immediate a headbanger as Fight Fire with Fire is, it works just as well when playing off of the group's first proper ballad with Fade to Black.

This also showed the finesse these kids had in the beginning with the Call of Ktulu, whose mammoth 9 minute instrumental still feels daunting to this day. Though all of Metallica's potential was to be blown wide open just a few years later on Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning has some of the group's greatest concert staples and deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as their other classics.