SOME KIND OF MONSTER

I'm not a big fan of Metallica, I enjoyed their early records when I was much younger, but got bored with them as they seemed to lose their creative spark. Still, I find this documentary to be infinitely fascinating. I think I have watched it about five times and every time I see it my perception of what is going on between all these personalities is different. In fact you don't have to be a music fan at all to enjoy this tale of psychological entanglement and confused co-dependency, my wife hates metal and has watched this video with me two or three times. This documentary has little to do with metal and everything to do with the baggage our past brings into our abilities to cope with others in the present. That may sound like a bunch of stuffy pseudo psycho-speak, but if there is one thing that this video has in abundance is ironically humorous over anlayzation of every thing these poor guys do.

My favorite part of the video revolves around a pretentious and obnoxious therapist who is brought on by Hetfield to help the band. Although James is enthusiastic about their new- age snake oil salesman at first, it's interesting to watch Hetfield slowly come around as the others become increasingly angry about this pushy blood sucking therapist's attempts to run the band for his own money dreams and power schemes.

This video is full of the sort of pretentious attitudes and absolutely hilarious cluelessness that seems to go with the lifestyle of upper echelon rockers. I have often described this video to my friends as the real life Spinal Tap. It's also kind of sad to see the guys in Metallica light years away from their high octane roots in bay area punk and metal clubs dealing with baby sitting issues, quality family time, insane over analyzation of their music and childish petty squabbling. Just when you are about to jump into your TV screen and strangle everybody in frustration, they finally start to pull things together by firing their therapist and bringing on a new bass player.

Robert Trujillo, the new bassist, arrives to save the day. I remember Robert from his days with Suicidal Tendencies, one of the better early metal influenced punk bands and an important step in the fusing of punk/thrash with metal skills. Who would have thought back then that this young punky gang banger would someday be offered a million bucks to join Metallica, who knew back then that punk rock was going to pay someday, big time! After all the frustration and deadlocked inertia of the other three members, it is almost a tear-jerking moment of joy to see Trujillo hit the stage with the enthusiasm of a teenager. Thank you Robert for reminding these guys that chunky heavy riffs with angry lyrics are supposed to be fun.

Cudos to Metallica for letting the camera take an unflinching and unflatering look at their lives. That took a lot of guts, the kind of guts these guys had when they first turned the world of fast heavy rock upside down and inside out.