Dave Mustaine Explains Why Diamond Head Was So Important for Early Metallica

“Lars had spent a lot of time with the guys in Diamond Head.”

By now, we’re all more than familiar with Metallica‘s massive influence. However, the band would never have achieved the status that it has today if it weren’t for their influences. We all stand on the shoulders of giants who came before us, and the same rule applies here. However, in Metallica’s case, they even managed to further promote their influences and make them popular. This was the case with Diamond Head.In the band’s formative days, Dave Mustaine played an important role. Speaking to AXS TV in a recent interview, he pointed out that Diamond Head’s debut record, “The Lightning to the Nations,” is one of the releases that made the most impact on him.

“Any self-respecting metal fan that knows anything about Dave Mustaine or Megadeth or Metallica for that matter knows how important Diamond Head was,” he explained (via Blabbermouth). “They were called the natural successors to Led Zeppelin in NME. I mean, that, to me, is quite a compliment.”

What really made Diamond Head so special in Mustaine’s opinion was the approach to writing. Back in those days, a lot of the British bands didn’t make a breakthrough on the American market, despite their originality. What Dave and guys in Metallica found to be so exciting was something that they haven’t heard much in the US at the time.

“I loved the music because it was riffs and it’s not chords,” Mustaine added. “American songwriters were doing a lot of chord writing and the European and predominantly the people in the United Kingdom were coming up with that riff. And a riff is simply something that is a melody that is played over and over and over and over again. So it has to be really good or it becomes this monotonous droning.”

With this in mind, Diamond Head made huge impression on young metal musicians on the other side of the pond. Little did they know that this influence would eventually help them reach stardom. Dave continued:

“Diamond Head was one of the first bands that I saw that played music that I understood that I wanted to play. And when I was in Metallica was when we were basically discovering Diamond Head the most.”

“Lars [Ulrich] had spent a lot of time with the guys in Diamond Head, and this was such an influential band to me and to the guys in Metallica that there’s seven songs on the back of this record. And on side A, it’s ‘Lightning to the Nations,’ ‘The Prince’ and ‘Sucking My Love.’ And we played ‘The Prince’, we played ‘Sucking My Love.’ And on side B it’s ‘Am I Evil?’, ‘Sweet and Innocent’, ‘It’s Electric’ and ‘Helpless’. And we played ‘Am I Evil?,’ we played ‘It’s Electric’ and we played ‘Helpless.'”

Of course, these covers were super important to them. Not only was the music new for this market, but they could easily pretend that the songs were their original pieces. He added:

“There’s five songs off of this record that we were playing in Metallica, and a lot of people thought those were original songs, because we weren’t rightly going out there and explaining to everybody, ‘Hey, these songs are great, and you’re probably gonna think they’re ours and we’re not gonna tell you that. We’re gonna give credit to where credit’s due.’ Nah, nah. We’re gonna be quiet and make you think we’re really great.”