Kill ‘Em All was a revelation, but it wasn’t until Metallica’s second album that the size of their ambitions became clear. Ride The Lightning, with its epic scope and progressive tendencies, leapt so far ahead of its predecessor that it might as well have fallen out of the sky. It has its own cadre of influences, of course, but it was still a singular and almost alien accomplishment in its era.

Which isn’t to say that RTL is an off-putting album. There’s a reason that so many 13-year-olds have embarked upon their personal metal journeys from this starting point. With its booming, reverb-y production and many hooks, RTL is rich and approachable from the first spin. There are so many earworm riffs on this album that it’s not even worth namechecking them. But RTL’s catchiness only draws you toward a core of cold steel. This album marks a massive harmonic and lyrical shift for Metallica. Gone are Kill ‘Em All’s blues notes and party-hard lyrics. In their place are darkness and horror. After a lovely classical-guitar prologue, opener “Fight Fire With Fire” plunges into a nightmare of chromatic speedpicking. Hetfield screams out nuclear-war anxieties: “We all shall die!” It’s a far cry from “When we start to rock/ We never want to stop again.”

Indeed, most of RTL’s songs grapple with death, often from the perspective of the condemned. The title track details the rage and terror of a death row inmate; “Fade To Black” contemplates the benefits of suicide; “For Whom The Bell Tolls” reflects on the brutality of war (a theme Hetfield would return to several times on ensuing albums). Ironically, the most lyrically influential song on the album might be the instrumental “The Call Of Ktulu,” which popularized the work of H.P. Lovecraft as a source of inspiration to metal bands. Live favorite “Creeping Death” flips the script by speaking for the Biblical Angel Of Death. And yet, somehow, these songs are all crowd-pleasing bangers. Rarely has metal been so terrifying and so anthemic at once.