Pestilence!
Metallica - The Four Horsemen (1983/ Thrash)
Hello internet pals of music. Today let’s commemorate the release of Metallica’s first full LP, “Kill ‘Em All”, which was released 39 years ago (holy shit).
Have you ever made your own kite?
In 1986 (or maybe ‘87, but I think 1986) I did, as part of an assignment for an Earth Science class. I don’t think that class is taught in Texas anymore.
We had to choose a partner, then research and build a kite to fly against the other teams in a friendly competition. There were a few categories: best design, longest flight…
I had a friend we’ll refer to as J.B., and he was not the most well-liked person in our class. He was smarter than most, astute and misanthropic. He occasionally wore a trench coat. He probably became a Libertarian as he grew older.
But he loved Metallica. And so did I.
So we decided to make our kite a tribute to our favorite band.
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I’m not sure how much you care about kites. In Afghanistan, they used to have kite competitions (eventually banned by the Taliban) that were so competitive that people would do things like attach razor blades to their strings, so that they could sweep their kites like deadly hawks and sever the strings of rivals. People were accidentally killed, though.
We may have had that type of energy when we chose our design: the box kite. We wanted to destroy everyone else.
Box kites are square, and according to Wikipedia: high performance. They seem illogical upon first glance, like how a penguin seems like the worst design when compared to other birds, but excels when you adjust for environment.
We knew we had a good plan: Balsa wood for the frame. Mylar for the screens. Tethered by a fishing line connected to a collapsible rod for maximum, quick control based on reeling in, or letting line out to adjust for the wind.
By 1986, Metallica had released 3 albums: Kill ‘Em All, Ride the Lightning & Master of Puppets, so on three sides of the box, I redrew each album cover. On the fourth I drew the band’s logo.
We were so confident in our kite that we didn’t even bother to test it. We also didn’t want to risk damaging it, because it was a goddamn masterpiece of 7th grade heavy metal devotion.
We never took pictures of it.
On competition day, we arrived to class with our box kite. Everyone else had chosen typical kite designs, and the only variations seemed to be in the materials used. The other teams looked at us like we were idiots.
I remember a lot of kites going up, then quickly crashing to the ground. It was a perfect spring day in Houston. Perfectly blue sky, perfectly steady breeze. A day for kite champions.
When it came to our turn, I was the runner. Our first go didn’t catch the wind. Shit. Maybe our arrogance had blinded us to this actually being a terrible kite, a penguin in the sky not the sea.
Attempt #2 went much better. J.B. adjusted his technique, and let the line out freely. So freely that the kite just kept shooting upward, becoming tiny in the sky. He found a good air stream, and locked the reel.
That was the big mistake.
We thought using the fishing rod would allow J.B. to feel the aerodynamics like he would a fish. But holding the control line of a kite in one’s hand lets the captain feel the tiny adjustments necessary to guide a high performing kite like ours. Subtle differences.
So, that’s where we fucked up. The wind up there must have shifted too abruptly to relay all the way down the line quickly enough (the kite was really up there…) and by the time J.B. felt it and unlocked the reel, the wind had snapped the line, and we watched our Metallica kite float off across the perfectly blue Houston sky.
I’ve always wondered where it sailed off to, and if anyone found it. I think that would’ve been an amazing thing to stumble across, if it actually survived the crash. I always imagined it just dropping out of the sky into traffic. We were disqualified because we lost our kite, but we were rewarded with an A on the project.
Metallica hadn’t developed their full potential when Kill ‘Em All was recorded. Like many first albums, it’s an exorcism of their earlier influences and earlier attempts to figure out who they were. Get these things on tape finally and move on to the future. One of those exorcisms was replacing guitarist / co-songwriter Dave Mustaine with Kirk Hammett. Mustaine , for those who don’t know, went on to form one of the other Big Four of 80s Thrash: Megadeth. It was a bitter rivalry. I chose my side, Metallica, and hold that to this day, like a sports fan’s dedication to the team that once had a few amazing seasons but hasn’t made it to the playoffs in about 20 years.
When I’m asked why Metallica over Megadeth, the best example is this song. The music was written while Mustaine was still in the band, but Mustaine’s lyrical concept is about sex at an auto repair shop. He ended up recording it for Megadeth’s first album, but for me, Metallica’s version of barbarian times is the only match for the epic turns of this masterpiece of 80s Heavy Metal.
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