Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF
April 20 in San Francisco is celebrated annually like a national holiday. Commonly known simply as 420, the day consists of 15-20,000 people basically sitting on a hill in Golden Gate Park smoking pot all day. Coincidentally, the 2019 version actually was a national holiday, as Good Friday preceded, Passover started, and Easter Sunday was the next day. This year’s 420 also had one more reason for San Franciscans to celebrate, and that was the world premiere screening of the documentary Murder in the Front Row: The San Francisco Bay Area Thrash Metal Story.
The afternoon of 420 was the perfect time for the premiere. It was extremely windy — hurricane gusts almost, so much so that it caused a tree to fall onto cars and into the middle of Fillmore Street, merely one block from the entrance of the AMC Kabuki Theater, where the screening was held, and where so many thrash metal shows took place back-in-the-day (when the Kabuki was a venue, not a movie theater). This felt like an analogy to the unexpected whip and craziness of those deadly circle pits from the old days, recalling back to the beginnings of the San Francisco thrash metal scene.
Murder in the Front Row, the book, has a myriad of photos that cover a few more years and a few more bands than its big screen counterpart: Metallica, Exodus, Slayer, Megadeth, Testament (Legacy), Possessed, Anthrax, Death Angel, Vio-Lence, D.R.I., and Forbidden. Murder in the Front Row, the documentary, tends to gravitate to the origins of primarily Metallica and Exodus, with a healthy dose of Slayer and Megadeth thrown in.
It would be difficult to make a movie based entirely on photos alone, so director Adam Dubin expands that reach with live footage from some of the earliest shows, as well as interview segments with those who lived it (and animations of some of their stories), including not only the musicians, but also the early scene fans and friends. According to Dubin, “We got enough [material] here for three movies… [I] have to make choices as a filmmaker: what do you include and what do you not include… [and] the thing I wanted to include was all these wonderful side stories.”
There was one necessary time jump to the present day in the film, and that was to discuss the untimely passing in 2002 of Exodus’ original singer Paul Baloff. Although both Metallica and Exodus ruled the early San Francisco thrash metal scene, it was Exodus who was basically the region’s ‘house band’. As said in the film, while Metallica was constantly out on tour and carrying the torch for Bay Area thrash and starting to get famous all over the world, Exodus was typically home to raise the flag for the scene. Baloff was such a charismatic and larger-than-life character and scene ambassador, if you will, that the film would have felt incomplete had his passing not been touched upon.
Unfortunately, there were also two other present day segments, both of which were unnecessary, served no purpose to the story, and wasted several precious minutes that could have been used to show more of the amazing classic photos, live footage, or stories of those days gone by. The first was a quick Metallica segment from their 2017 concert in Mexico, featuring a meet-n-greet with a Mexican wrestler -masked fan. The other was about Metal Allegiance, a present day supergroup that includes one original Bay Area thrasher, Alex Skolnick of Testament. In fact, in the weeks leading up to April 20, it seemed that the Metal Allegiance concert at The Fillmore was mere coincidence to being on the same day as the Murder premiere.
Metal Allegiance is made up of four core members (Skolnick, David Ellefson of Megadeth, Mike Portnoy formerly of Dream Theater, and Mark Menghi) who wrote original songs with a different guest singer on each one. The majority of the 20 released tracks were written with non-Bay Area vocalists, while five of them include original Bay Area thrashers Chuck Billy of Testament and Mark Osegueda of Death Angel. For the live shows, Metal Allegiance always includes guest musicians, such as Gary Holt of Slayer, Phil Demmel of Vio-Lence, Nita Strauss of Alice Cooper, Bobby “Blitz” Ellesworth of Overkill, John Bush of Armored Saint, Cristina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil, Max Cavalera of Soulfly, Troy Sanders of Mastodon, and others.
The evening at The Fillmore did serve as a wonderful afterparty for the Murder premiere. Demmel, Holt, Billy, Bush, Skolnick, Sanders, Ellefson, Portnoy, and Menghi ran through a great 22-song setlist featuring 11 originals, eight covers, and a special three-song set of Exodus songs, led by (past and present members) Holt, Steve ‘Zetro’ Souza, Gary Hunolt, and Tom Hunting. Before the Exodus set, Hunting’s drums needed to be quickly set-up (word is he couldn’t do Exodus songs on Portnoy’s kit), and during that 15 minutes, it quickly became a huge energy downer when they decided to do a Murder in the Front Row conversation on stage with director Dubin (authors Lew and Oimeon were MIA). It was kind of unfortunate for the fans to have to sit through that. The Fillmore should have had Hunting’s drums pre-built on a riser, and quickly rolled it out on stage to keep the high crowd energy up and the show flowing. It seemed that barely anyone in attendance had any idea who Dubin was, and not everyone may have known about the Murder film screening or even perhaps known about the book. It was an odd moment, but once Exodus finally started, it was no surprise that their set was a definite highlight of the show and produced the largest and craziest circle pits of the night!
The other highlight of the show was the previous two songs in the setlist, which featured former Anthrax singer Bush and current drummer Charlie Benante, performing their songs originally released in 1993 and not heard live probably since 2005, when Bush was pushed out of the band! The final three songs after Exodus featured every musician that performed throughout the evening, and, by the very end, there must have been ten or 12 performers waving to the crowd and throwing their setlists, picks, and drumsticks.
While the Metal Allegiance show was mostly entertaining, its inclusion in Murder in the Front Row made no sense in the flow of the documentary. Sure, its special guests of revolving musicians include Bay Area thrashers like Holt and Demmel, but the majority of Metal Allegiance has never had any involvement in the original Bay Area thrash scene. In other interviews with director Dubin, the tie-in has been described as “a pretty cool way… to kind of take it into the now.” Sorry, but Murder in the Front Row is not about the ‘now’; it’s about the ‘then’.
It should be noted, however, that many of the original Bay Area thrash metal bands are still writing great new music today. If there was any present day segment that deserved to be in this film, it should have been about this. Death Angel, Testament, and Exodus are still putting out new albums, Metallica’s latest album received rave reviews, and Vio-Lence is on the comeback trail with two recent sold-out shows in Oakland and at least five more shows booked in 2019 (it is not yet known if new music will follow).
For those who did not live through it and have ever wondered about how the Bay Area thrash metal scene came to be, Murder in the Front Row is a must-see documentary. The film is going to have its public premiere at the San Francisco Doc Festival. There will be two screening dates, both at The Roxie in San Francisco, on May 31 and on June 4, at 9pm. From there, according to Dubin, “There’s a bunch of other film festivals that have reached out, there are a bunch of independent theaters that have reached out… [and] ultimately, the most people that will see this film will see it on download and DVD. The most important thing is that we did this work and documented the scene…”
