The Call of Ktulu

“The Call of Ktulu” closes Ride the Lightning with an extended instrumental rather than a conventional vocal song. The album version is credited to James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Cliff Burton, and runs for nearly nine minutes.¹ Its position at the end of the record gives the album a stark, unresolved finale after the vocal songs that precede it.

The piece originated in an earlier instrumental idea associated with guitarist Dave Mustaine, who had been a member of Metallica before forming Megadeth. The released arrangement was developed and recorded by Metallica during the sessions for Ride the Lightning in Copenhagen, with producer Flemming Rasmussen.² The songwriting credit reflects the subsequent band arrangement rather than reducing the track to a single author.

The track creates drama through gradual development, contrasting clean-toned passages with heavily distorted riffs and lead-guitar figures. It opens quietly, establishes a recurring melodic shape, and then expands through increasingly forceful rhythm-guitar sections, guitar harmonies, and solos. The absence of vocals makes timbre, dynamics, and repetition carry the narrative function usually supplied by lyrics.

Cliff Burton’s bass playing is especially prominent in the arrangement, both as low-frequency support and as an independent melodic voice. The performance also illustrates Metallica’s early practice of treating instrumental sections as substantial compositions rather than brief interludes. Its changing intensity and long-form design connect thrash metal with elements of progressive rock and traditional heavy-metal instrumental writing, without abandoning the tight riff-based attack of the band’s early work.

The title refers to Cthulhu, the extraterrestrial entity created by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft’s fiction presents Cthulhu as a vast, ancient being associated with forbidden knowledge, dreams, and terror beyond ordinary human understanding.³ Metallica’s spelling, “Ktulu,” is a stylized form rather than the spelling used in Lovecraft’s best-known story, “The Call of Cthulhu.”

The instrumental does not retell that story or quote its text. Instead, its slow introduction, ominous harmonies, and surging climaxes suggest scale and menace without fixing the listener’s interpretation to a verbal plot. The song belongs to a wider current of heavy-metal engagement with Lovecraft, whose work has influenced album titles, artwork, lyrics, and instrumental atmosphere across the genre.⁴

“The Call of Ktulu” received renewed public attention through Metallica’s 2006 live release S&M, where the band performed it with the San Francisco Symphony. That version won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance at the 2001 ceremony for the related S&M recording period, helping establish the composition as one of Metallica’s signature instrumentals.

A less obvious feature of the original track is its balance between written architecture and performance space: its motifs recur, but the extended solos allow the musicians to shape tension through phrasing and tone. Later live performances have therefore treated it as both a fixed composition and a vehicle for variation. The title also marks an early example of Metallica using literary horror as an organizing concept without turning the song into a lyric-driven narrative.

Instrumental

A musical composition performed without a sung vocal part.

Cthulhu

A fictional cosmic entity created by H. P. Lovecraft, first appearing in “The Call of Cthulhu.”

Thrash metal

A heavy-metal style characterized by fast tempos, aggressive riffing, and pronounced rhythmic attack.

S&M

Metallica’s 1999 live project with the San Francisco Symphony, combining the band’s performances with orchestral arrangements.