In a new interview with Gibson’s Mark Agnesi, Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett looked back on using an unexpected guitar for the band’s debut album, ‘Kill ‘Em All.’
“I had my Flying V for the recording of ‘Kill ‘Em All,’ the rocker recalled. However, he needed more than just his Flying V guitar to make the album. “I remember, at one part, there was a break in the middle of ‘[The] Four Horsemen,’ and we needed something with a Floyd Rose. But there were nothing but Gibsons around.”
“But then someone found a reversed Firebird that had a Bigsby on it,” Hammett added. “And that’s what we ended up using for like a hot second on ‘Kill ‘Em All’ during ‘Four Horsemen.’ And that was like one strange guitar that’s on ‘Kill ‘Em All.’”
While the band wanted to achieve a different sound with the album, the album’s original mix wasn’t ‘heavy enough.’
The producer Paul Curcio believed that James Hetfield’s heavily overdriven guitar tones sounded too harsh. He also, according to Jonny Zazula, mixed the album with Hetfield’s rhythm tracks barely audible and Hammett’s guitar solos much louder than the band wanted.
“[Curcio] was just mixing Kirk like Carlos Santana,” Zazula explained. “I get there at the end of the album, after being broke from finalizing the recording, and James is all depressed. And Lars has to speak to me, and he says, ‘Jonny, this isn’t heavy enough.’ So we went in and had James redo all the rhythms, with the big, big chunky sound he’s famous for.”
Even after James Hetfield was allowed to strengthen his guitar parts, Paul Curcio and engineer Chris Bubacz chose to handle the final mixes on their own. While Jonny Zazula passed on the band’s instructions, Curcio and Bubacz made some decisions in the mix that still bothered Metallica years later.