“Creeping Death” by Metallica

Ride the Lightning gave Metallica plenty of ways to flatten a room in 1984, and "Creeping Death" is the one that marches. James Hetfield sings it as the Angel of Death himself, sweeping through Egypt to deliver the tenth plague, and the idea came straight off the couch: he and Lars Ulrich were hooked on The Ten Commandments, watching it at Cliff Burton's place because his parents had that rare early-'80s luxury, a VCR.

All four wrote the music, with Hetfield and Kirk Hammett on the words, and the band produced it themselves with Flemming Rasmussen engineering. The guitars gallop, Burton's bass grinds underneath and Ulrich drives it like a stampede. Issued as the album's only commercial single that November, it's still among the songs Metallica play live most often.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.