“Metal up your ass, baby!” Standing on the lip of the Lyceum theatre’s stage, sweat-soaked and smiling, James Hetfield urges the denim and leather-clad “noisy fuckers” before him to raise their voices in unity one last time for a raucous singalong loud enough to alarm the more genteel patrons of the arts spilling out onto the streets of central London’s bustling theatre district post-curtain calls.
The date is December 20, 1984, the occasion the closing show of Metallica’s first European headline tour, and the 21-year-old Californian and his bandmates - guitarist Kirk Hammett, bassist Cliff Burton and drummer Lars Ulrich - are in high spirits, already drunk and ready to party harder as they conclude their threesong encore with Metal Militia, the red-blooded battle hymn they positioned as the closing track of their debut album Kill ’Em All the previous year.
