Ride The Lightning

Description

Throughout the eight tracks that make up "Ride The Lightning," Metallica produces a nuanced tableau of death, an exercise in variation that allows for a gradual deepening (from the concrete and political "Fight Fire With Fire" to the monstrous "Call of Ktulu") and whose result is one of the best albums of the band. "Ride The Lightning," the title as well as the cover illustration prepare the listener for a face-to-face encounter with death: "Ride The Lightning," an image of a new Icarus whose fate will again be to burn as suggested by the central image of the electric chair. It is the symbol of the contradictions of a civilization whose moral values are always subordinate to the old law of Talion ("Do unto others as they have done to you," then the entire song "Ride the Lightning"): death only manifests itself against a backdrop of nonsense.