Metallica releasedKill ‘Em All, their first of nine studio albums, way back in 1983. That means they’ve been inciting fans to risk minor concussions due to massive rock-induced head banging for nearly three decades. That’s a long run for any band, let alone a heavy metal one. Heck, that’s a lot of music to digest even if you’ve been with them from the start. Fortunately, you can now listen to their entire collection in a fraction of the time, thanks to this incredible performance of every single Metallica song played in just four minutes.

Guitarist Rob Scallon is behind this very cool, very impressive uber-song, performing every studio album track from the band in chronological order, starting with Kill ‘Em All‘s first track, “Hit The Lights,” all the way until the closing number from 2008’s Death Magnetic, “My Apocalypse.”

Though Scallon includes just brief snippets and riffs of each song and album, you do notice some trends when you hear all of Metallica’s music presented like this. First off, they seem to have managed to find a way to stay true to who they were right from the start all the way until their last album. I know I’ll hear from giant Metallic fans telling me why that’s not exactly true, but there seems to be a natural progression and evolution here like you’d expect from any band over that long a time, and with that many lineup changes. Through and through, this all sounds like Metallica. Nothing stands out as being out of place or weird.

However, every single slower song of theirs sounds exactly alike. And while we expect some bleakness in the titles of heavy metal tracks, when read one after another they feel like the world’s most depressing diary entry titles. “Harvester of Sorrow”? “The God That Failed”? “Broken, Beat and Scarred”? These guys are super rich and famous. Imagine how dark things would have been if they were failures.

What stood out to you listening to this mega-Metallica piece? Tell us in the comments below.

Image: Rob Scallon