The bridge just tells you straight up to buckle your seatbelt. The chorus just shows the sudden outburst nature of going insane, before just giving up, because in life, there's no winning. When the verse begins, it just has this soft, pain-filled vocals that along with the guitar tone, just screams hospital-stuck, in my opinion. The intro solo just has this technical style to it, and so epically opens the song, telling you that it's one of those songs that's going to be legendary and epic. The sterile soulless sound fits the theme of the song so well. The sterile clean chorus sound to me isn't lush and beautiful, but unnaturally clean, sterile, soulless. One beats out Master by a small margin (sorry, Master, you still have a place in my heart from being the first really hard song I learned on guitar). It has the soft, echo-y guitar, the reverb-y drums, the great lyrics, the distorted guitar and, of course, that memorable solo at the end that rivals Eric Johnson's and Slash's solos. This single piece pretty much defines all of Metallica. It's a masterpiece from beginning to end. This is how you craft a damn metal ballad, no less one covering such a deep topic as war. Every time this song plays on the radio or comes up on my playlist, I feel nostalgia as I remember the first time I heard this song. I began listening to some of their other songs, like Enter Sandman, For Whom The Bell Tolls, and Fuel, and I began to fall in love the band (for a lack of a better term). However, as soon as the tempo picked up, I became hooked. But to be honest, I didn't know what to expect when I first listened to the intro. With this being the first Metallica song that I ever listened to, One really served as a gateway to me becoming the metal fan I am today. Have listened to it many hundred times and will hear it again thousands of more. I love beautiful guitar play in the intro, the miserable sounding verses and choruses, the fast paced, angry singing (nearly screaming) and there are awesome solos in this song. The song is so good, I can almost feel the incapacitated soldiers pain that you hear from the first half and anger that you hear from the second half, such a good job they did with the lyrics. My 3 favourite songs of all time are One, Inside the Fire by Disturbed and Surfacing by Slipknot, but One is the ultimately best song that has ever been created in my opinion.

Metallica ride the lightning songs