Best Kirk Hammett solo in the entirety of Metallica's discography, period.
Also, I'll give Dave a shout-out here for the badass riffs he wrote for this track.
"Fade to Black" was one of the 20 songs (from limewire of course) my uncle put on my very first mp3 player. Shit still bangs.
Hell yeah I love being the "here's some cool music" uncle. Gotta carry on those traditions.
Ride the Lightning is definitely up there, but I think my favorite is probably Blackened. Kirk's soloing can be kind of directionless and sloppy/wanky, but the structure of the rhythm section gives his solo more of an arc and the frenetic tempo makes the slop more stylistically appropriate. And the dumb 14 year old boy in me is never not gonna love the silly whammy bar abuse that ends the solo (I think it's a big reason I got the LTD version of his signature guitar with the locking nut as a teen). Also solo aside, godDAMN does the intro/verse riff go fucking hard. The blistering place and off-kilter rhythm never fail to get me headbanging.
Despite the signature guitar, I'm not a big Kirk fan. I feel like he's a nice guy and a serviceable guitarist who is lucky that Dave Mustaine is such a colossal prick (honestly not so different from Kirk as a soloist, but an undoubtedly gifted songwriter). Not exactly a hot take, but I'll always be partial to Marty Friedman; his Tornado of Souls solo is legendary, of course, but his Lucretia solo is sublime (if less flashy). Always find it funny how after Marty ties a neat bow on his solo Dave comes crashing in with like the dumbest conceivable opening to a solo.
Beat Metallica album. The only one I will put on somewhat regularly.
Literally, this has too many hard hitting tracks for me to say I prefer Master of Puppets over it. Also, I am a Cliff Burton fanboi, and he had way more songwriting contributions on this one and just more interesting bass parts overall. Ktulu is what I'd probably say is my favorite Metallica song ever.
I'm a crust punk and For Whom the Bell Tolls is a stenchcore song played by a thrash band. I'm also a Cliff guy cause I'm mostly a bassist. Master of Puppets gets too wanky for me andninfind each song could have a minute cut out. And justice songs could usually have 3 minutes cut and I'm also not big on it anyway. I'm not listening to thrash for technicality
Funnily enough, I kinda do like that aspect of Justice because I mostly do listen to prog out of all metal subgenres. That and a fascination with bass playing is why Orion is my favorite track off of Puppets.
Also, I just wish Lars would finally drop the damn stems for Ktulu (and all other Metallica songs with unreleased stems while he's at it).
As a non metal guy who's favorite punk genres are ironically the closest to metal punk gets, generally the proggier side of stuff ain't for me, especially if it's something like thrash which I think you should just kinda aim for Reign in Blood. As far as metal goes, I like a lot of sludge and doom metal and listen to a lot of Bolt Thrower. I'm a riff merchant, a mediocre musician but good songwriter, I live and die by the riff hook
