Metallica will begin re-releasing its catalog in summer 2015, with expanded CD and LP editions in the queue. It all begin Record Store Day — April 18 — when the band re-releases its early cassette demo No Life ‘Til Leather.
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The seven-track demo (Metallica’s second overall) dropped during the summer of 1982, when the band members themselves (which then included Dave Mustaine on guitar in the pre-Kirk Hammett days) sent the copies out to friends and the underground metal cognoscenti.
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Drummer Lars Ulrich told Rolling Stone he’s says he’s sifting through a “lot of goodies that are laying around in cardboard boxes and tape vaults,” and may eventually re-release other early demos.
Metallica promises to announce a “big package” of reissues, “depending on how quick we can turn it around,” according to the Rolling Stone report. “Yesterday, I found another tape and handed it to [engineer] Greg Fidelman, and there was some crazy stuff on the B-side that I didn’t even know existed,” Ultrich said. “It’s all coming. We’re doing our best.”
All of No Life ‘Til Leather‘s tracks except for “The Mechanix” made it to Metallica’s 1983 debut Kill ‘Em All.