In a recent interview with RichardMetalFan, Shadows Fall drummer Jason Bittner was asked to name the bands that first got him into metal. The drummer revealed: “The band that got me into heavy metal, technically, is Iron Maiden. Maiden’s my favorite metal band of all time. That was the first band I saw of that genre in 1980, the day that MTV came on the air. I was 10 years old, and I was, like, ‘What in God’s name is this?’ And that just sent me on my trajectory, Maiden and Judas Priest.”
“But then once — uh, when did I get [Metallica’s] ‘Ride The Lightning’? I wanna say, I think ’84, a friend of mine let me borrow a record,” he continued. “He’s, like, ‘Oh, you’ve gotta check out this band.’ And I’m, like, ‘Who’s Metal-lica?’ And he goes, ‘No, it’s pronounced Metallica, man.’ I’m, like, ‘All right, cool. Metallica.”
Bittner wasn’t really fond of James Hetfield’s voice. However, he got used to it over time. “And I took it home and I hated it. I was like, ‘God, what the hell is this?’ ‘Cause I was used to Bruce Dickinson and [Rob] Halford, and all of a sudden [I heard] James Hetfield, and I’m, like, ‘What on earth is this?’ I taped the album just in case I might like it one day, and I gave the record back to my friend. And a week later, I’m doing my paper route and I was humming [a riff]. I’m, like, ‘What is this that I’m singing to myself?’ And it was the riff from ‘Fight Fire With Fire’. And I’m, like, ‘Oh, that’s that Metallica band. I didn’t think I liked that.’ And that started that,” he added.
Similar to his first experience with hearing Metallica for the first time, the drummer thinks the Metallica show with Queensrÿche from their earlier days wasn’t the smoothest either. “I just thought [Queensrÿche] were great. I thought they were better than Metallica that night, that specific night,” he admitted during an interview with Troy Story: A Podcast For The Collar City.
He added: “And for me — I feel terrible saying this because I just got a message from Lars [Ulrich]; I just got a message from Lars from one of my bandmates a couple of weeks ago, sending me my best and he hadn’t seen me in a long time and he wanted to tell me, he said hello — but I am not the first person to say this, and we all know that Lars, even though we all know and love him, was not the most technically proficient technician night after night, let’s say, on the drums.”
Metallica is done with touring for this year. Next year, they are getting back on stage with three shows in Germany, starting on February 14.
