LEPER MESSIAH RIFF A JAMES HETFIELD SPECIAL

Still get asked occasionally to this day if I liked METALLICA growing up, and my response is usually something like hey man! time to get over it and move on (laugh). I am 38 years and 8 months old for goodness sake, how old does that make LARS ULRICH and JAMES HETFIELD, the drummer and rhythm guitarist/vocalist artistic axis of the most famous thash metal band in history?

METALLICA it seems have been around forever, well 1981 is forever, that's when this hardcore punk meets trad metal pioneering group first burst onto the club scene in Ulrich's adopted San Francisco, back in the early days the band also employed the services of the firebrand DAVE MUSTAINE, who was very ungloriously fired by the ruthless Ulrich in 1983 with the muted and somewhat apprehensive involvement of other band members before the groups first album ever got past the initial writing stages.

Mustaine got his revenge by forming MEGADETH, much more of a ALICE COOPER trad metal influenced outfit than the heavily VENOM influenced METALLICA, Venom being an obscure black metal band of the early 1980's that was one of the first to blend hardcore with metal, but nothing Mustaine created in MEGADETH matched the brutal melodic cohesion and impact of Metallica's 1984 thrash epic RIDE THE LIGHTNING or the more formulic but no less heavy duty MASTER OF PUPPETS from 1986.

My favourite METALLICA song, and I didn't have many besides a few on the much more mainstream self titled black album from 1991, is one that I have rarely even heard any Metallica fan mention - LEPER MESSIAH off MASTER OF PUPPETS. Friggen heck man this song has one chunky guitar riff, a Hetfield special.