Hit the lights

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Hit the lights
Metallica
publication 1982
length 4:17
Genre (s) Speed ​​metal
Author (s) James Hetfield , Ron McGovney , Lars Ulrich
album Kill 'Em All

Hit the Lights ( . English : for example, " Do the lights on is") a song of American Metal - band Metallica .

Emergence

Hit the Lights was made around 1980, before Metallica was founded, but there are no longer any recordings of it. When Lars Ulrich played the song Dave Mustaine by Panic, he found it “not bad, even if it was played sloppily across the board […] As crude as the tape sounded, it reminded me of the NWOBHM stuff I knew. I could understand how these guys implemented their riff ideas on the guitar. ”Ulrich, who was friends with Brian Slagel , learned in 1982 that he was planning a compilation called Metal Massacre to introduce the scene in Los Angeles . Ulrich therefore contacted James Hetfield , who had played with him and Ron McGovney at Leather Charm , and convinced him that the band would introduce themselves with a demo cassette for the sampler. The duo Hetfield / Ulrich recorded the song on a simple four-track device in the house of the former Leather Charm bassist Ron McGovney. Hetfield took over the rhythm guitar , bass and vocals , Lars Ulrich played the drums. Dave Mustaine was already a guitarist for Metallica, but in the opinion of Hetfield and Ulrich he was too new to record the guitar solos . Finally, a friend of the band Lloyd Grant recorded the solos:

"Lars wanted me to play some guitar leads ... So James and Lars brought the four-track over to my apartment and I did the solo on a little Montgomery Ward amp."

"Lars wanted me to play some guitar solos ... So James and Lars brought the tape recorder to my apartment and I played the solo on a small Montgomery Ward amp."

- Lloyd Grant

Just a few hours later, Hetfield and Ulrich brought the band to Brian Slagel into the studio, it was the last title that Slagel for Metal Massacre I received. 50 USD for the mastering borrowed Lars Ulrich of John Korn Arens, the co-producer of the sampler, and so the recorded on tape version of was Hit the Lights as the last track on Metal Massacre I published. For the second edition of the sampler, the song was re-recorded, this time with Dave Mustaine on lead guitar. In this version the piece can also be heard on several demos before it was finally used as the first song on the debut album Kill 'Em All .

Music and lyrics

Hit the Lights was by far the fastest track on Metal Massacre I with around 160 bpm , the consistently high tempo was the way the band expressed aggression and power. The piece is introduced by a fanfare-like double chord reminiscent of the beginning of a concert. Characteristic for the piece is “the transition from the long held notes or fermatas at the beginning and the fast eighths and sixteenths of the following guitar riff”, under the fermatas there are “extended drum fills ”.

The punchier and more professional production on Kill 'Em All underscored "the brutal energy and anger" of the song. The lyrics are about Thrash Metal itself and celebrate a new Heavy Metal identity. The first line of text "No Life 'Til Leather" gave its name to the demo of the same name, which was released in 1982 after Metal Massacre I was released.

The song shows the musical roots of the band such as Motörhead , Iron Maiden and Diamond Head and proves Metallica's "own and inimitable style".

Further use

The song was Metallica in both the box set Live Shit: Binge & Purge , and on the Some-Kind-of-Monster - EP reused. It was also a bonus track for The Unnamed Feeling (2004) and part of the medley for the Hero of the Day single (1996). The American band Black Tide covered the piece on their 2008 album Light from Above and it is part of the soundtrack of the game Guitar Hero: Metallica .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Joel McIver: Justice for all: The Truth About Metallica . Omnibus Press, 2004, p. 12 .
  2. ^ Matthias Weckmann: Metallica . Great times . In: Metal Hammer , February 2013, p. 20.
  3. ^ Matthias Weckmann: Metallica . Great times . In: Metal Hammer , February 2013, p. 22.
  4. ^ A b Joel McIver: Justice for all: The Truth About Metallica . Omnibus Press, 2004, p. 38 .
  5. ^ A b Glenn T. Pillsbury: Damage incorporated: Metallica and the production of musical identity . CRC Press, 2007, pp. 9 .
  6. ^ Glenn T. Pillsbury: Damage incorporated: Metallica and the production of musical identity . CRC Press, 2007, pp. 25 .
  7. ^ Dietrich Helms, Thomas Phleps: Sound and the City: popular music in an urban context . transcript, 2007, p. 134 .
  8. ^ A b Malcolm Dome, Mick Wall: The complete guide to the music of Metallica . Omnibus Press, 1995, p. 4 .