Murder in the Front Row: The San Francisco Bay Area Thrash Metal Story (Adam Dubin, 2019, USA)

Murder in the Front Row: The San Francisco Bay Area Thrash Metal Story is an entertaining, breezy exploration of the dawn of thrash metal. As with grunge in Seattle, the dawn of heavy metal in the United States centered around a specific geographic region - the San Francisco Bay Area. Even bands that originally formed elsewhere (for example, Metallica) ended up moving to the Bay Area to get access to talent and the network the area provided. Being the largest example of commercial success of this genre, Metallica naturally gets the most airtime during the documentary, but the film also devotes a considerable amount of time to their peers, Exodus. Though successful in their own right, Exodus becomes more of a contrast to Metallica, with their original frontman, Paul Baloff, famous for refusing to write any ballads.

The film devotes a considerable amount of time to exploring the culture and milieu surrounding the Bay Area scene, including club owners who were willing to let the scene grow (despite the behavior of some of its members). What’s fascinating is that the Bay Area not only had an initial wave of thrash bands, but a second wave (including Possessed, arguably the progenitors of death metal), that included a very strong roster of bands in their own right. For metal fans, the talking heads in this documentary will not disappoint. Beyond the musicians, there are also interesting interviews with essentially local historians - guys within the scene who chronicled and taped every show. Carried through by a narration from Bay Area native, comedian, and metalhead Brian Posehn, Murder in the Front Row is guaranteed to please metal fans, but may also be engaging to music fans more generally, considering how culturally dominant some of these bands became over time. The time capsule of live footage is also great to see.

7/10