Remember when Metallica were actually worth a shit ? Well, unfortunately this isn't the CD to get if you want to job back memories of the "good old days". What we've basically got here is an early Metallica demo ("No Life 'til Leather"), but the fucknuts at Outlaw records have overdubbed/mixed-in audience noises in an attempt to pass this off as "live recordings". Why they did this is beyond me. Perhaps it was to hide the piss poor sound quality (very dull, with a significant loss of high end), or perhaps it was to avoid any copyright problems (which failed, as Metallica's lawyers have filed some sort of "cease and desist" order to prevent this from being distributed). The only worthwhile thing about this CD is the fact that you get to hear Mustaine singing on some of the tracks (as this was recorded with Metallica's original lineup, sans Hammett and Burton), and it's also entertaining to hear how much James used to sound like Dave (oh, did I mention that "The Mechanix" is also present here ? I guess that's also a small selling point). I'm sure Metallica fans will be running out to buy this (and it's availability is pretty wide spread, court order or no court order), but then again, these are the same people that actually bought the "ReLoad" album, so there's no stopping them anyway. For what it is (early demo recordings of Metallica), it's actually pretty cool, but Outlaw Records should be hung out to dry for the "live recording" fiasco and the utterly stupid spoken intro they tacked on the beginning of this. Old schooler's looking for a Metallica fix to rekindle the old spirit should just buy a second copy of "Kill 'em All", as it'll see a lot more rotation in your CD player than this ever will...

Note: the b+w cover scan on the left seems to be the most prominent version of this CD, but I've seen at least 2 other versions including the colour version on the right.

© 1999 chorazaim