Film Review: Get Thrashed

Last week I had the distinct pleasure of attending the New York City premiere of Get Thrashed: The Story of Thrash Metal, a documentary about - you guessed it - the history of thrash from its origins in the 1980s to whatever form it's still kicking around in today. Directed by Rick Ernst, Get Thrashed featured Rat Skates, formerly of Overkill, as associate producer.

The showing took place in a theater on the East Side as a part of the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival. This association probably made the whole showing possible, but it lead to a few problems that very nearly killed the fun of this party before it got started.

First, there was the matter of seating arrangements. Because New York City is one of the world's original thrash capitals, many of the members of the NYC-area bands featured in this film wanted to come to the premiere. Because New York City is a place where class equality is a convenient lie, the organizers decided to reserve the front four rows for the bands and their families, even though there weren't really enough chairs for all of the ticket holders and this wasn't a crowd for acting star struck. Clearly, fire code be damned when there are rock stars involved.

But then the organizers went too far: they informed us - less than a minute before the show was supposed to start - that Get Thrashed would have an unannounced opener, a piece called Bang Bang You're Dead about an indie rock band from Utah. And they even had the director, a neophyte giving his first showing, in the audience to make an introduction.

As you can no doubt imagine, the result was a disaster. The film itself wasn't that bad - it reminded me a bit of Instrument, if Instrument had been Jem Cohen's first film - but anyone with half a brain would know that showing a film with no real narrative and a bunch of disassociated imagery about a group of college-age indie kids to a crowd of mostly 30+ metalheads would go over like a lead zeppelin. I was impressed: the crowd managed to maintain a sullen silence for the first few minutes before the conversation rose to low roar, people started actively booing the endless transitions or announcing loudly they were going out to get popcorn. The film's end after half an hour was a mercy killing overdue by about 25 minutes, leaving us to wonder if we had been the victims of a last minute switch due to poor ticket sales for Bang Bang Your Dead or some sort of bullheaded stupidity by our hosts.

Thankfully, the rest of the evening's awesome was proportional to the beginning's suckitude: Get Thrashed is an excellent, excellent film that gets even better when you watch it with a room full of fans not afraid to show their love for a nostalgia trip down heavy metal memory lane. Focusing on the world's four big thrash areas (LA, San Francisco, New York and Germany) and moving in a rough chronological order that tied the US Big Four (Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax) and German thrash giants Kreator to the scenes they helped spawn, Get Thrashed happily traced the progression of thrash from its roots in Metallica's garage in LA and Exodus's brutal live shows in San Francisco in 1980 to the movement's apogee with the 1990 Clash of the Titans tour, using photos, video and interviews with everyone from Blitz Ellsworth and Rat Skates to Dave Mustaine to Zetro to Lars Ulrich to the members of Dark Angel to those crazy bastards from the Old Bridge Militia to tell the tale.

While all of those interviews are informative, a few go beyond and become truly memorable. Blitz Ellsworth, for example, is either really funny or really, really crazy, but in a way that makes you want to have a beer with him so you can hear some stories. Dave Mustaine is...well, Dave Mustaine, the strange cross between super arrogant guitar god and comic book geek. My favorite moment in the movie was when Mustaine goes on a short rant about how he made the careers of everyone in Megadeth, could play better than everyone in Metallica, was, in fact, responsible for thrash music as we know it today - cue a gasp from the crowd - and then the film makers cut to Scott Ian, who tells the camera, "if it wasn't for Dave Mustaine, thrash music probably wouldn't exist."

There were some nice tribute moments, too: moments of silence written in for the memories of Cliff Burton, Paul Baloff and Dimebag Darrell made even more poignant by the sentiment of the crowd, which gave each man a full round of applause. These moments underscored how much of a community metal can be when it's brought together around something good; when in-fighting and external attacks aren't part of the equation and the mood turns to celebration of what's been done.

All of these moments underscore what seems to be Get Thrashed's underlying purpose: to set down the official story, such as it is, as a monument to one generation of metalheads and the bands they loved. It's a huge strength for the film, but it also underscores the film's one weakness: Get Thrashed puts thrash metal's foundations in a near vacuum, as if it sprang fully formed from the minds of a few guys who liked playing loud and fast, tiptoes around the more difficult issues and ascribes everything that's going on in metal now to what started 27 years ago. Historically it makes the film a little skewed, but that one problem pales in comparison to the enjoyable experience Get Thrashed provides to the viewer. If you can go see it, do; you'll have a great time.

"I is the Smart...I is the Smart..."

Fun with science: next time a snarky hipster calls you a meat head for rocking out to [insert metal song title here] and tells you only Neanderthals with IQs that make celery looks smart listen to metal, you can tell them a study done in England says otherwise. According to the study, done by the University of Warwick on 1,057 students, all members of the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth, which represents the top 5% of academic achievement in Britain, a disproportionate number of the students listed metal as their favorite type of music. The researchers feel the tie-in to metal are the feelings of alienation smart people have trying to adjust to society and the feelings of alienation expressed in so much of metal music.

Of course, these findings don't mean that there aren't absolute meat head metalheads out there; the Slayer-loving genius I mentioned in my first post is the exception that disproves the rule. Furthermore, if you need to justify yourself to anyone, especially elitists who think all irony all the time is the way to live your life, as to why you love metal, it might be time for a gut check. But still, when you know you listen to music that features as many cerebral guitar lines as it does blast beats, it's nice to get some validation that your music choices reflect some higher intellectual processes. Biatch.

Bodomoriffic

I love Children of Bodom with a sick, sick passion that makes no sense to me. I had heard them once or twice before this year, but they didn't make nearly the impression they did the first time I loaded up their complete catalog (no, thank you, bittorrent!) into iTunes and let rip in the middle of last year - it was like someone took all of my secret pop rock loves (think Fountains of Wayne) and metalized them - Hate Crew Deathroll was a revelation because it was technically complex, rocked hard but had hooks that would pull down a whale. It doesn't matter that you can never understand what Alexi is singing and that half of the lyrics read like they're aimed at the angsty teenage market - my previously described sick passion was now in full flame. And then I saw them perform live.

On a good day, as they had when performing in New Jersey as a part of the Unholy Alliance Tour, Children of Bodom on stage turns out to be something like musical stage crack: very fun, very addicting and something you look forward to seeing again at the next possible opportunity, even if you're bleeding because someone elbowed you in the head in the pit. To put it even more plainly: they (along with Mastodon) were the highlight of a day that ended with so-so performances by Lamb of God and Slayer, for God's sake. They blew Slayer off the stage (you may direct all hate mail here). To say I was eager for their return would be an understatement; I became mildly obsessed with the idea.

Because I'm a good boy and the metal gods love me, I got my wish, wrapping up my 2006 concert tour at an even 12 with CoB's headlining performance at the Nokia Theatre on December 17, with Sanctity, Gojira and Amon Amarth opening. You can read the official review here and see the pictures from the show here.

As far as the unofficial observations go, today's bit isn't so much about the bands as it is about the venue. I'm finding that the Nokia Theatre is rapidly becoming my favorite location to see a metal show in NYC, especially when I have press access. To be sure, there's the three 3-star-or-better shows I saw there in 2006, but this time around I discovered what really makes the difference between this venue and, say, Irving Plaza, the scene of such recent disappointment.

First of all, the barriers didn't collapse, which was really, really awesome by itself. Second, if you've got the right pass, security doesn't really care what you do. I could have hung out in the interview room, although that might have gotten embarrassing when the bands showed up expecting to answer questions (not something I'm ready to prep for). When the three song limit for shooting pictures was up for each band, I retreated to the VIP balcony to the left of the stage, where I not only got some great angles for additional shots but found that all rules are basically suspended - security doesn't care if you stand on chairs, smoke pot, have sex in a corner; it's all good because the Man doesn't really come up to the balcony, except to shine flashlights on the crowd surfers so the guys in front know who's coming up to the barrier. By the way, I only engaged in one of these activities - I'll leave you to guess which one, to keep some mystery going in this blog.