Murder In The Front Row
Dir: Adam Dubin
The thrash movement finally gets the documentary it deserves.
Thrash metal was more than just white hi-tops and acne. This feral roar of noise and violence that exploded in San Francisco’s Bay Area in the early 80s, setting off chain reactions across America and Europe, turned out to be one of the great cultural movements of the last few decades, even if the gatekeepers of cool would rather gnaw off their own feet than acknowledge it as such.
Murder In The Front Row goes some way to rectifying that. Directed by Adam Dubin, whose work on the 1992 documentary A Year And A Half In The Life Of Metallica gave him lifetime access to the thrash kings’ inner circle, it’s a loving and amusingly sweet-hearted look at the scene’s birth, childhood and adolescence, focusing on its roots in grubby Berkeley, just across the bay from boho, well-heeled San Francisco.
Dubin has assembled all the key players as talking heads; members of lends the film its title). But it isn’t so much about the musicians as the community that built up around them, centred on such legendary bars, dives and shitholes as The Stone and Ruthie’s Inn. There are crazed crews of longhairs with names like The Slay Team, and unsung, if unhinged, heroes, not least original Exodus singer Paul Baloff, whose war cry of “Death to posers!” was seldom an empty threat.
