Metallica's own remastered Ride The Lightning
Crazy thing, i never actually published my original review of Ride the Lightning. It's in my 3rd book (The Two Become One), but i didn't put it on facebook or the blog, then totally forgot i didn't. It starts with the sentence "highly critical of those in power," and ends up confirming that Metallica does in fact know how to read. This time around we're more concerned with blind first impressions of a remastered repress made purely for profit. Who wouldn't buy a copy? I imagine Metallica owns a significant percentage of their own royalties at this point, not that they actually need to care.
I also have very little interest and/or enthusiasm for A/B-ing this record with my CD copy, so that's a last resort if it happens to sound weird in some way. No, i want to approach it on a fundamental level: do i actually prefer imbibing it as a record? Will The Call of Ktulu give me the ASMR chills the way the cassette did to my pre-teen sponge-o-brain? Can tweaking the EQ make Escape sound less like begging for Hard Rock radio play (buy my third book and flip to page 110 for more detail on that one)? Have i covered every fact about this album "only superfans will know?" Again, you'll have to buy my book to check, but yeah i think so. Enough foreplay, let's give it the during-play and pillow-talk about it after.
First off, yes the gigantic electric chair reference to Stephen King is tangibly more awesome, but somehow not quite as secretly badass as holding the CD or cassette in your hand. You can call me crazy, but there was something almost deliciously naughty about cassettes back in their heyday. I'm sure there was something similar about vinyl back in the 60s/70s, especially something like this that conjures up the movie The Gate (for you OG Stephen Dorff fans). It's hilarious to watch now, but that movie scared the crap out of me as a kid.
Second off, yes this is release number 4 from Metallica's own record label, Blackened. Blackened Recordings is now the official copyright holder of Metallica's music. This is what i said i wanted in the intro, Target didn't fund this pressing, Metallica did, then sold it to Target for Metallica's profit. So, did they do a good job? Hell yeah, it sounds like i remember, but maybe a tad cleaner. The real question is what happens when we cross the 20-minute event horizon of doom. Fade To Black and Ktulu definitely don't deserve worn out dies and lackadaisical steam settings, you know?
Oh my sweetness, it's glorious. I might be biased, but Metallica's acoustics have always been the most gorgeously harpsichord-like Nashville-sounding twinkly stars on a pitch-black night to my ears, and there's absolutely no break-up as we careen into the event horizon and collapse into the infinite mass of the navy-blue label. There are in fact new things to hear, like up-volumed backing vocals and double-bass drum. I expect side b will be just as fantastic. Escape is still a bit of a fap song, but it sounds good, and Creeping Death totally makes you forget you just listened to it.
Yep, i got nothing. Run out to anywhere that has Metallica's own Paisley Park style remastered vinyl, it's absolutely fantastic. Which brings me to the real point about vinyl. Vinyl isn't better than digital as a format outright. What it does is ruthlessly force your mix and master to sound good at a normal freakin' volume.
And yes, The Call of Ktulu is a spine-tingling brain-gasm that means i will absolutely postpone whatever Meg's ex-husband's album is until at least tomorrow. I don't want any other thoughts desecrating the gloriousness that was Metallica's own release of Ride The Lightning. It is, as they say, all that and a bag of chips.
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