Review Summary: Good Riffs
The reason “Lightning to the Nations” is one of the ten best metal albums in history is nothing other than an unmatched execution of guitar work but what we are really talking about are the mother*cking riffs. This album has riffs like they’re the only thing that matters in life. If the riffs on this album were condoms, they would be Magnum XLs. If this album were a recipe, the ingredients list would read something like riffs, riffs, more riffs, face-melting riffs, riffs that make your girlfriend ovulate, riffs, soul-destroying riffs, riffs that saturate panties, riffs that could awaken the dead, riffs, more riffs, Goddamn riffs, holy-sh*t riffs, and riffs that are the best riffs ever. On Viagra packages it says in fine print “yeah if you’re having trouble getting wood you can take this pill but really a much cheaper way is to just listen to the riffs on Lightning to the Nations and go forth and knock the bottom out of your wife’s ass.” If these riffs were a dinosaur, they would allow a T-Rex to suddenly grow longer arms to play a guitar and it would change its name to Riffosauras Rex and would just play gnarly riffs from this album to kill its prey instead of wasting time chasing it down. If the bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a radio attached to it while hurtling through the air and was playing a riff from this the entire continent of Asia would have been leveled isntead of just one city. There's actually a secret international law that says that nerdy weapons engineers are forbidden from ever listening to this album while building weapons because that weapon would obliterate 50 billion galaxies in the universe. The riffs on “Helpless” and “Am I Evil” and “Sucking My Love” and “Its Electric” are 4 of the best riffs in the history of riffdom and that’s only because they aren’t quite as rifftastic as the riffs on the title track and “The Prince.”
The only reason Metallica were able to write some of their riff-tacular early records is because James and Lars and Dave sat around in Lars' basement listening to these riffs a lot when they weren’t mainlining Jack Daniels and wiping their asses with newspapers because they were so poor. Well, Lars wasn’t because his Dad was a rich tennis player, but the other dudes were. They paid their bills in riffs, and each time a riff came out of one of their guitars the dudes from Diamond Head got riff royalties. The riffs on Lightning to the Nations are so great that God set up an international trust fund so that whenever someone in music plays a tasty riff 10% of the proceeds automatically go into Diamond Head’s riff account which makes them the richest guys ever and is the reason you don’t hear any riffs from them anymore. These riffs are aphrodisiacs and intimidators. If you want to get laid, you pretty much just have to play these riffs in front of a girl. If someone wants to fight you after school, you can show up with a ghetto blaster blasting these riffs and the other dude will run away in terror because he knows you know the power of the riff and there’s no way he could possibly come out of this alive. I guess what I’m trying to say is the riffs on this are pretty good.
