Ride the Lightning

Ride the Lightning

Metallica

3.5/ 5.0 from 12 ratings
#458 Overall#2 for 1984
Descriptors
progressiveintensemelodicdark

Reviews

BL
Apr 5, 2026

I want to like this more than I do. There are three or four tracks here that are genuinely excellent — inventive, well-produced, emotionally resonant. But the album as a whole doesn't sustain that level. The middle section in particular feels like it's treading water, and the closing track, while ambitious, goes on too long. That said, I do think this is worth hearing. At its best, it shows real creative vision, and even the weaker tracks have interesting ideas in them. It just needed a more ruthless editing pass to trim the good from the great.

RO
Apr 5, 2026

Somehow sounds even better decades later.