Music

Spotify's Metallica documentary focuses on the band's early years

by Richard Howard

Expansive documentaries on musicians have become increasingly popular over the past few years. From Tom Petty to Nina Simone, music’s biggest and most fascinating artists have been profiled – but conspicuously missing has been the biggest metal band (shit, one of the biggest bands period) of all time, Metallica. Sure, there have been docs that captured important moments in the band’s history (A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica focussed on the making of “The Black Album” and its subsequent tour while the excellent Some Kind of Monster chronicled them nearly breaking up before the release of the terrible St. Anger), but there hasn’t been a proper, ‘origin story’ type doc (stop it, Behind The Music: Metallica doesn’t count). Well someone’s decided to pick up the slack, and it’s… Spotify?

Yep, as part of their foray into original video content, Spotify presents their Landmark video series, which is “about monumental moments in music history.”

The series’ first offering is Metallica: The Early Years, a four part series spanning from the band’s inception to their 1984 sophomore album Ride The Lightning. It seems Spotify is deciding to go big or go home with Landmark, as they’ve also filmed a documentary about the legendary Beach Boys album Pet Sounds.

Check out Part 1 of Metallica: The Early Years below – the three remaining episodes can then be viewed exclusively on the Spotify mobile app.