Metallica: Kill ‘Em All - Ranking Every Song Worst To Best
8. Hit The Lights
The song that introduced Metallica to the world. For a debut that was made with the budget of a homemade sandwich, this is still putting your best foot forward right out of the gate. Though it takes its sweet time warming up with the guitar intro, we're off to the races once James' lightning fast guitar licks kicks in.
Considering this is one of the first true thrash albums, Hit the Lights serves as a great litmus test for the type of music you're about to hear, with some of the fastest tempos that you've ever heard and downpicked guitars that would probably give you tendonitis if you tried to keep up with them for more than a few minutes. Even for a bunch of snot nosed kids, you can see them growing past their contemporaries on this song.
From the opening riff, you can hear the beat switch up 3 separate times, with one killer riff following the next. Any lesser metal band could have probably made a kickass song with any one of these riffs, but Metallica know that these kind of things work better together than to spread them out over time. If you're going for the best music you can possibly make, you can't settle for anything less than perfection on every single track.