Seek & Destroy - Remastered

James Hetfield based the theme of this song on a Diamond Head song called "Dead Reckoning." He explained to Guitar World: "I used to work in a sticker factory in L.A., and I wrote that riff in my truck outside work. This was our first experience in a real studio. I used a white Flying V, which was the only guitar I had back then. I still have the guitar in storage. The song is based around a one-note riff that was up a little higher. Though most of my riffs are in E, that one worked off an A."

An early Metallica track, this is an angry track where the band gets out some of the aggression that years later would lead them into band therapy, as shown in the documentary Some Kind of Monster. Much of the battlefield imagery in the song related to the Los Angeles music scene, where the band played before moving to San Francisco. The LA club crowd didn't seem to get Metallica, and the band didn't understand them either.

Hetfield wrote this song with his Metallica co-founder Lars Ulrich, the drummer in the band. They were going through a lot of changes at the time; in a span of just a few months they swapped out their bass player (Cliff Burton in for Ron McGovney) and lead guitarist (Kirk Hammett in for Dave Mustaine). They had also relocated twice during this time, first from Los Angeles to San Francisco, then to New Jersey, where the tiny label that signed them, Megaforce Records, was based. They made their debut album, Kill 'Em All, at a small studio in Rochester, New York, on the cheap. At first it was just a small cadre of metalheads - the guys who read the fanzines and came to shows - that bought it, but over the next few years as Metallica swelled in stature, it sold over 3 million copies.