My first thought was like Mommy, help me. So, I walked into the General Admission seats and within seconds of the first note, there is this crazy violent pit going and Cliff, Kirk and James are circular head banging at a seriously high speed of neck rotation. Meta who? I hadn't heard much thrash yet let alone seen it live. Well now, who should be opening for OZZY but the above mentioned Metallica. I lived in Northern California and made my way up Highway 101 to the Cow Palace in Daly City to see Ozzy Osbourne. Perhaps it's the chromatic nature of their early stuff that's the difference. Similarly I think some of Metallica's later stuff is more appealing but it arrived too late to get me interested in it. Albeit by the time they did I'd pretty much got my hair cut, was busy working and was not really that into any of it any more. But, to me, it lacked a warmth or something that meant I never loved their music in the way that I did, say, Black Sabbath's Greatest Hits album the first time I heard it Or Maiden's Number of the beast album or Rainbow's Down to Earth or even in the way that, eventually, Guns'n'roses would do. It's riffs and palm muted chuggs and solos. To all intents and purposes there's every element that's in the heavy metal I do like in Metallica's early stuff. I was kind of left standing there think "Meh" and not really impressed by either group's new music and bands. Most of my friends suddenly got into Metallica. Everyone went from being long haired wearing denim and leather, into 2 groups - one that wore spandex, high-heeled boots, makeup who got into American bands like W.A.S.P, Motley Crue, Van Halen et al and another that was into various new incantations of 'metal' whether it was prefixed by 'thrash' 'death' 'black' or something else that mostly stuck to the original uniform. Then it kind of split - almost overnight.
Fans of Zepp, Floyd and similar too although I wouldn't categorise them in the same way.
I was around the heavy metal scene in the UK when they first started getting big - a fan of bands like AC/DC, Rainbow, Maiden, Sabbath, Ozzy et al with a big group of friends who were into the same. TBH, with the possible exception of Fade to black this early Metallica left me cold.
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