Plankton

Although Kill Em All was a breakthrough album, I feel it lacked the production quality they had achieved with Ride The Lightning, and every album after (up to the point of And Justice, I won't go beyond that). Just a natural progression and evolution of available technologies. Also, they developed better as far as song structuring and took more chances melody wise with RtL. Kill Em All has quite a bit of your standard bar chord chug where there are more breaks, tempo changes, and melodic passages all through RtL. They kept this formula, and built upon it all through Master Of Puppets. And Justice was more of a "Back to the Drawing Board" album as they had lost Cliff, which was key to their creative process, but they did retain the same songwriting structure to which they had built upon.

So, based on that I have to go with Ride The Lightning.

...and why isn't Garage Days listed? Because it was an EP? It comes in at a close 2nd for me. Some great tunes on that one (although they were covers), and I can imagine them beating on Jason all while laughing their heavy metal asses off during recording.

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Trollheart

Of course it's the same song: it's a cover. And DH wrote it... Or are you saying Metallica play it the same as DH? Which they don't, as I've already mentioned...

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Engine

Yeah, seriously. I love that thing oh so much. When I was young, other metal children made fun of me for this because, hey! what! you like SLOW music?! Metallica's Cliffless bullshit?!!!

Well, yes, I guess I do. Aside from the Misfits ones, all of the songs on that EP are better than the originals. My favorite is this one..



Also, I pretty much agree with everything else you said, Plankton.

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William_the_Bloody

I love Metallica, one of the greatest bands to ever grace the stage of rock n roll and defiantly the best of the big 4, but I got to say, as much as I like Garage Days, I've got to go with Killing Joke's version of the Wait

AlecRob

Ride the Lighting IMO has is the best overall, performance-wise, production-wise, composition-wise.

If and Justice for All had better production/audible bass it would be their best album.

Musicfanatic

I have Behold the Beginning, so I'm not certain I have heard the original song or not. I've heard that that was a rerecording, but I liked it more than Metallica's cover, so I am with you there...!

By the way, I chose Kill 'Em All!

Engine

I think Killing Joke is overall a far better band than Metallica but the Garage Days EP made too deep an impression on me when my brain was still mushy and developing

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Forward To Death

It sounds pretty true to the original, and that's why I think it's odd that you can like one and not the other.

Trollheart

Well yes, they do sound very similar. As I've said before though, I feel DH's original is more progressive and nuanced whereas Metallica kind of just thrash it out. Not saying I don't like their version, but I certainly prefer the original. Now all we need is a hip-hop version! "Yo! Am I evil! I said, am I evil? You bet yo ass motherfucker!" (with apologies to all rappers...)

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Musicfanatic

"Yo, my mama was a crack addict, she smoked herself alive. Agonizing little itch of withdrawl, I'm a crack baby, I'm trying to score after rappn' in a dive."

Of course, a dive really is more a rock term, I think. But what the heck...!