Metallica And The Dawn Of Thrash - Aural Amphetamine

Layman’s guide to to ye olde Bay Area metal

A ton of DVDs are available to the headbanger curious about the early days of thrash metal, including the excellent A Headbanger’s Journey from 2005. Here’s a useful entry point to those not yet familiar with the cult of the skin-tight jeans and hi-tops. The usual crop of journalistic talking heads are on hand to recall the twists and turns of the thrash scene, focused correctly on San Francisco’s Bay Area from 1982 to 1988, after which the music went global before being wiped out by grunge.

The Big Four Of Thrash (Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer) are only present in the form of archive live footage and press clips – the curse of the unofficial DVD – but a host of lesser musos are on hand to spill the beans about those far off days. Much lesser, unfortunately: while members of Elixir and Sacrilege BC do have a worm’s-eye view of what went on back then, there are a ton of much better-known metal musicians who could (and should) have been roped in to help out. Aural Amphetamine is only reasonably useful as a result, although that’s more than you can say about most of these things…

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

Sexy Intellectual | SIDVD 534

Reviewed by Ryson Dahl
<< Back to Issue 349

Login Here

Free Newsletter


Subscribe to
our email newsletter by emailing:

anna.bowen@
metropolis.co.uk