Metallica “Ride the Lightning” 1984. Today, August 3rd, is Metallica co-founder/singer/guitarist James Hetfield’s birthday (b. 1963) so I’m spinning their 2nd LP, and their last on an indie label, Megaforce Records; they signed to Elektra Records after the success of Ride the Lightning which went to #100 on the US charts with little-to-no commercial exposure. It since has gone several times platinum. I’m not a big metal fan, in fact I think this might be the only Metallica album we have (and I literally was just given it 2 days ago!), but I have always liked Metallica as far as metal goes. I did have Master of Puppets on a dubbed cassette back in the day. So I’m not going to wax poetic about the tunes but just say that it’s really great, really heavy (of course) – many critics consider Ride the Lightning their best release: a big leap in complexity, musical prowess and pushed the metal genre forward. Metallica released three singles from the album: the dark power ballad “Fade to Black” (a promo single only, it did managed to chart in Switzerland of all places), the biblical plague-themed “Creeping Death” (I don’t think it charted anywhere but has been ranked as one of Metallica’s best songs by folks who do that sort of thing), and the amazing, epic “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (my album cover says “Toll” but that sounds weird so I’m guessing it’s a typo) which was also released as a promo-only single but went on to be one of Metallica’s most popular songs (even I know it!). It did chart, but that wasn’t until 2019 on US Rock and Alternative chart.