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Greatest Hits: Metallica - The First Four Albums

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This 10-year anniversary hit me by surprise, even though I’ve been with the site for 5 years. I read the blog daily for a couple of years before joining the staff, and I knew that it had been around years before that. When thinking about my favorite article, there were many that came to mind, but ultimately I went back to the days of Cosmo and his series of articles examining each song on Metallica’s first four albums, which published in the months before I joined the crew.

I bought Master of Puppets when it was new, and quickly devoured the band’s past catalog. I cringed in real time as I heard what they later turned into. In this article about “Damage Inc.,” Cosmo says this is Metallica at its sharpest. It’s ultra-tight, with great riffs. It’s the last song with Cliff Burton and the last one with a real connection to their fuck-it-all thrashy attitude of the past. To me this article about this song also represents what is sharpest about Invisible Oranges. Reading this series of articles was where the awareness crystallized for me that metal was something we could speak intelligently about. That it was worth examining. That we had people in the worldwide metal community who were thoughtful about what they liked and why. Who tried to understand and debate with some civility why certain songs or certain artists mattered to us. Cosmo’s perception coupled with the quality of writing, not just on this series of articles, made Invisible Oranges one of a kind. Though it is different now, with many different voices, that’s still what we try to do, and I’m continually honored to be a part of it

—Vanessa Salvia

Read: ‘Metallica: The First Four Albums – “Damage Inc”’

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