Kirk Hammett Reflects on Metallica’s First Two LPs

Metallica recently celebrated their debut album, Kill 'Em All, turning 40. In 2024, their sophomore album, Ride the Lightning, also turns 40. Despite the significant passage of time, guitarist Kirk Hammett still looks back at those two albums with great fondness.

Hammett recently spoke with WMMR's Sara and said of those first two LPs, "When I listen to those tracks, I'm just kind of blown away when I look back. We were all so young, but we had a very clear vision of what we wanted to do, what we wanted to sound like, how we wanted to execute things, the type of songs we wanted to write."

He added, "I'm actually blown away when I look back at it. When we were making those albums and touring behind them, we just kind of took it for granted. It was just, like, 'All right, we did that. Let's go on to the next thing.'"

Hammett further noted, "We never like sat down and really thought about the accomplishment that we made. And so, 40 years later, I'm able to do that and I'm able to go, 'Man, we really pulled something off and we were just kind of blasé about it,' you know?"

Both Kill 'Em All and Ride the Lightning were given the grand reissue treatment in recent years, which included new vinyl pressings. In fact, Metallica has a massive vinyl bundle available on their website of all of their studio recordings. Recently, the band gained a controlling stake in Furnace Record Pressing, a vinyl pressing plant based in Alexandria, Virginia. It's the same plant the band has been working with on all of their recent pressings.

Now that Metallica owns its own vinyl plant, Hammett says, "Having this pressing plant is the beginning of a great project that we're going to be embarking on in the next ten years or so."

Metallica's North American leg of their M72 World Tour continues on August 11 and 13 in Montreal. A full list of upcoming shows can be found at Metallica.com.

Kirk Hammett celebrates his birthday on November 18. While his work in Metallica has been celebrated for years, there's another aspect of his playing that also should be recognized: His "Guitar Face."

You know, all of those weird facial expressions guitarists tend to make when they're performing and are just feeling it. Some examples of "guitar face" are rather strange, but Hammett's "guitar face" somehow is like an effortless cool.

Want proof? Here are just ten examples of Hammett's variations of "guitar face."