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No life til leather - Metallica

agamerwholovesmetal

By agamerwholovesmetal
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agamerwholovesmetal

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Since Metallica's new album is going to be released soon, I thought I would go through and review their discography starting with their most famous demo no life till leather. They had released quite a few demos before this but those were never officially released aside from the first version of hit the lights with Lloyd Grant that was featured on the Metal Massacre compilation. I’m going to go track by track and give you my thoughts on them individually.

Hit the lights

This song makes a great first impression of the band and in my opinion is even better than the version on kill em all. The riff absolutely melts your face and the band's sheer speed and aggression on this track blows nearly every other band out of the water. Lars proves every single person that says “Lars is a shitty drummer’ wrong within the first few seconds, Dave's solo is thrash perfection, and Ron McGoverny’s bass adds a big punch to the song.

Mechanix

This song was the precursor to the four horsemen and is completely different in terms of its tone. The four horsemen is about the apocalypse whereas this song is about how Dave really wanted to screw some chick in the back of his car. The song is full of cheesy car related sex puns such as the line “you made my drive shift crank, made my pistons bulge, made my balls melt from the heat” and it’s all great stuff. I always preferred this song to the four horsemen and this version is no different. 

Motorbreath

Great track not much else to say here as it’s basically the exact same as the version from kill em all just with Dave and Ron playing and a not as good production.

Seek and destroy 

The first thing I noticed when revisiting the demo is this version is way faster than the one from kill em all which I think works a little bit better. The song’s about wanting to go out and kill people (and possibly doing it) so the slower version, good as it may be, just doesn't fit the song's lyrics as well. Dave's guitar work is as great as ever and I love the way James says destroy on the track never ceases to make me smile, I don't know why but it does.

Metal militia

Another track with an absolutely face melting riff that kicks your ass. The song starts off fast (easily the fastest on the whole demo) and doesn't let up for a second. This was already one of my favorite cuts off kill em all and this would have been a much better ending song for the demo which the band likely agreed with as they made it the final track on kill em all.

Jump in the fire

This one is jump in the fire in name only. While the one off of kill em all is a dark song about the devil dragging people to hell (that sounds like it could have easily been an early venom song), this one is another sex song that makes the Mechanix look subtle in comparison. This is the only song from the demo I think is worse than the version from kill em all but it’s still enjoyable and the riff is once again awesome.

Phantom lord

Finally, we have phantom lord which is, say it with me now a great song with a great riff. I don't really have much to say about this song either as everything that's great about it I've already said a billion times in this review already.

And that's no life till leather one of the greatest and most important demos in metal history. Listening to this demo again really helped me see that this lineup of the band is incredibly underrated. Sure, Dave is great but so is Ron McGoverny who to my knowledge is the only official member of Metallica that never really got their moment to shine or at the very least record a studio album! He was kicked out of the band before they even had a record deal, and even his later band Phantasm never recorded anything, but a single demo and that band went belly up just a year later. I don't know how else to end this review so 9/10.

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