Metallica — Metro, Chicago, 1983

This filmed live concert documents Metallica at the Metro in Chicago on 12 August 1983, weeks after the release of their debut album Kill ‘Em All. The full concert captures a band of very young musicians at the dawn of thrash metal: James Hetfield on vocals and rhythm guitar, the newly arrived Kirk Hammett on lead guitar, Cliff Burton on bass and Lars Ulrich on drums. The setlist runs through most of the first record: Hit the Lights, The Four Horsemen, Jump in the Fire, Phantom Lord, Cliff Burton’s bass solo (Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth, Whiplash, Seek & Destroy and Metal Militia. Raw and head-on, the footage works both as performance and as historical evidence: on a club stage you watch the energy take shape that would reshape 1980s metal. An essential document of live metal, its speed and rawness intact.