1. FREE SPEECH FOR THE DUMB (1982)
Discharge
It still seems a bold move for the world’s biggest metal band to open a new record with a grinding dirge by Stoke’s most brutal punk terrorists. Once hated by the punk press for their relentlessly basic, bleak noise assaults – hammered out to a frantic stuttering rhythm (the ‘d-beat’, itself inspiring a global subgenre) – Discharge laid the template for metallic hardcore, and were keenly adopted by the metal underground.
There was a 90s mini-industry in Discharge covers among discerning metal bigwigs such as Anthrax, Machine Head and Soulfly, but with this face-ripping opener, Metallica stayed faithful to the original (from seminal 1982 debut Hear Nothing See
Nothing Say Nothing), while slowing it down to a metallic grind.