Metallica Through The Never (2013)

As a HUGE Metallica fan (and a fan of heavy metal in general), can you imagine the disappointment I felt when I found out that Bahrain's oh so perfect (sarcasm level breaking the roof) theater company, Cineco, only released Through The Never for a WEEK!! Now that my friends, is what you call pure bullshit. So I couldn't watch it in the cinema and experience the whole thing. But lucky for them, I have a pretty awesome sound system and a pretty decent TV, so my experience wasn't the full one, but it was fair to say the least. So the movie is about a roadie called Trip (Dane Dehaan) who goes to fetch a bag that the band needs...let's just say his journey's smooth at first, but after a while, anarchy steps in; and all hell breaks loose in the streets. All this is happening whilst Metallica are playing a concert of epic proportions. 

Let's just say that I was glued to the TV, for an hour and a half I didn't take my eyes off the TV, I don't even think I blinked man, cause in the end I was in tears (Or maybe that's cause they played Orion). And that brings me to the set-list, it was perfect, they played fan favorites from every album since Kill 'em All (except for Load and St.Anger, which are my least favorites so I couldn't give a fuck). And I say the set-list was perfect because the songs were appropriate to the plot of the movie. The minute they started playing Creeping Death, every song was getting progressively better in terms of the pyrotechnics and effects on the stage. Although my personal favorite was when the electric chair came down from the ceiling and they started shocking the shit out of it with 4 Tesla coils during Ride The Lightning.

Yes, this is where I wanna be in life.

The level of anarchy in this movie is sky high, I mean Metal and Anarchy go together like Bonnie and Clyde man. I particularly liked the scene where Trip finds himself in no man's land between the police and the rioters, and that Sitar like intro of Wherever I May Roam starts playing, then just as both groups start to charge towards each other, Cyanide starts playing, that scene was perfection man. After a brief encounter with the Horseman (the main antagonist in the movie), Trip is left walking on a road with bodies hanging from a bridge...what happens next made me scream. Ahhh, as Trip walks we hear the familiar harmonious intro of And Justice For All, and I said to myself "Are they really gonna play it in its entirety?" Well yes they did, now you have to understand, before this movie came out, Metallica never played And Justice For All in its entirety, so having them play it in a movie was fuckin' insane, what a treat!

So Trip finds the duffel bag that the band needs, the contents inside it are never revealed (although it is rumored that the bag contained Cliff Burton's soul), and Master of Puppets starts playing. Towards the end of the movie, Trip faces the Horseman in a rooftop battle that makes the city fall apart, literally. So this happens whilst Metallica plays Enter Sandman, but they stopped playing it towards the end cause the stage started falling apart. At this point I though the movie was gonna end, like that's it  the Horseman is dead, and the stage is fucked, so this must be the end right? But wait, they didn't play any song from their debut album, Kill 'Em All. This can't be happening, how can they forget?!?! But oh no they didn't, after assessing the damage, they play it...they play the big one....the song in my opinion that is bigger than Master of Puppets, fuckin' HIT THE LIGHTS!!! Yes as you can probably tell it is my favorite Metallica song.

Oh yeah baby!!

After that epic conclusion to what was already a mind blowing concert, Trip arrives back to stage, duffel bag in hand, and watches Metallica play Orion in an empty stadium as the credits roll. I mean you can't complain, you really can't. Even if you're not a Metallica fan, watching this movie will kick your ass so hard you'll end up in a wheelchair. It's a true concert film, like it doesn't get any better than that. It's definitely worth watching on a big screen TV with a banging stereo system. Because to be honest this is one of the best modern performances I've ever seen by Metallica. These days they're not as good as they were live, and I'm sorry but Robert Trujillo's backing vocals cannot match Jason Newsted's. But all that aside this movie is worth the watch, I would really recommend it if you just wanted to take a break and watch pure radness and anarchy (which everyone needs once in a while).

"HIT THE LIGHTS"

Ahmed Almatrook