The backdrop: I was in middle school, freshman year, fresh-faced and tuning into the sound of Turn the Page<\/em>, the song and the video on TV (we used to have a music television, kids…) I was just 12 years old at the time, and right on the cusp of nu-metal breaking into the scene. \u00a0My musical repertoire at the time was limited to my mother and father’s CDs, and rock meat Chicago back then. \u00a0Unaware that there was such a thing as the “middle school Metallica phase” among my peers, I coaxed two friends to go to a media store with me and asked for our more Metallica-savvy member to recommend me an album. \u00a0He said Ride the Lightning<\/strong> was maybe a bit too harsh to start out for the uninitiated, maybe I’d be better off with Load<\/strong> or\u00a0ReLoad<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I took that as a challenge. \u00a0Didn’t know what I was getting into. \u00a0See, I hadn’t heard anything outside of Turn the Page<\/em> or Whiskey in the Jar<\/em> at the time, didn’t know they were covers either, and was definitely not ready for a song like\u00a0Fight Fire with Fire. \u00a0<\/em>It hit me like a MAC truck, the pace, the intensity.<\/p>\n I didn’t get it. \u00a0Not at first.<\/p>\n For about two weeks, I kept wearing the cassette (we used to have those too) out, trying to make heads or tails of it. \u00a0It was unlike anything I had heard so far, but I couldn’t hear<\/em> much of anything. \u00a0Fade to Black\u00a0<\/em>was more merciful, and its mournful tune was alluring beyond my capacity to understand why, but other cuts, like\u00a0Trapped Under Ice<\/em> or\u00a0Creeping Death<\/em> were mysteries. \u00a0But I knew, I just knew that there was something there, something I wasn’t yet attuned to, something I was definitely<\/em> going to discover. \u00a0That being almost 20 years ago, I have since learned to trust that instinct, and it has led me to return to and discover many an album because of that same “something” there.<\/p>\n On week three, the album suddenly clicked.<\/p>\n One evening, playing it with my cousin-in-title-only, who was getting into Megadeth at the time, I heard\u00a0For Whom the Bell Tolls<\/em> and finally it clicked into place. \u00a0I could hear the riffs, having trained on them, I could hear the drums, I could hear the bass, I could understand the lyrics and, most of all, I was surprised to discover that the album cover reflected the music perfectly, as most of the album is in hues of blue – if you didn’t know, sounds have colors attached to them. \u00a0For Ride the Lightning<\/strong>, take a look at the cover and see what you’re getting. \u00a0It was a moment of blinding clarity and I knew then, I knew that this was it, this was the thing, this was my<\/em> thing. \u00a0My world had just changed, and by the end of\u00a0The Call of Kthulu,\u00a0<\/em>I was a different 12-year-old.<\/p>\n After two weeks of non-stop Ride the Lightning<\/strong>, I was ready to branch out. \u00a0That marked the beginning of three habits: one, ritually listening to albums, start to finish, in one sitting upon purchase to form a first impression. \u00a0Two, collecting discographies of bands I get into late. \u00a0These two habits would later form the basis of all my listening, and to this day I still use my iPod like it was a Discman that can hold many disks at once.<\/p>\n The third and perhaps most important lesson Ride the Lightning has taught me is that albums can be growers. \u00a0They can sound horrid at first listen, but then gradually blossom. \u00a0Patience is often rewarded, and this pretty much ensured that I would give any album the time of day, even if the genre is entirely foreign to me, and allowed for my branching out. \u00a0Over the years, I have had many albums that baptized me anew, time and time again, but were it not for the opening salvos of\u00a0Fight Fire with Fire,\u00a0<\/em>the mourning embedded in the heart of\u00a0Fade to Black\u00a0<\/em>or the suffocating darkness of\u00a0Trapped Under Ice,\u00a0<\/em>I would never get into something that has remained part of me through most of my life, and continues still to offer something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue, every time.<\/p>\n Release Date:<\/strong> July 27, 1984 Line-Up:<\/strong> Welcome to a new series on Tempelores where the staff members bare it all for the audience… and by baring all, we mean the origin point of our metal journeys, the singled out, solitary album responsible for being our gateway drug into the boundless universe of metal that in the end became more than just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":18722,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1709],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorial"],"featured_image_url":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/tempelores.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Ride-the-Lightning-150x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/tempelores.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Ride-the-Lightning-300x300.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/tempelores.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Ride-the-Lightning.jpg","large":"https:\/\/tempelores.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Ride-the-Lightning.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/tempelores.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Ride-the-Lightning.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/tempelores.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Ride-the-Lightning.jpg","ultp_layout_landscape_large":"https:\/\/tempelores.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Ride-the-Lightning.jpg","ultp_layout_landscape":"https:\/\/tempelores.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Ride-the-Lightning.jpg","ultp_layout_portrait":"https:\/\/tempelores.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Ride-the-Lightning.jpg","ultp_layout_square":"https:\/\/tempelores.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Ride-the-Lightning.jpg"},"post_author":"Sarp Esin","assigned_categories":"Editorial","yoast_head":"\n\n\n
\n ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/tempelores.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Ride-the-Lightning.jpg\")
<\/a><\/td>\nTracklist:
\n<\/strong>01. Fight Fire with Fire
\n02. Ride the Lightning
\n03. For Whom the Bell Tolls
\n04. Fade to Black
\n05. Trapped Under Ice
\n06. Escape
\n07. Creeping Death
\n08. The Call of Kthulu<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nLabel:<\/strong> Megaforce Records<\/p>\n
\nJames Hetfield – lead vocals, rhythm guitar
\nKirk Hammett – lead guitar
\nCliff Burton – bass, backing vocals
\nLars Ulrich – drums<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"