Say what you will about Metallica in the new millennium, they’re not afraid of trying something new. Not content to release a mere concert film, bored as they were with the usual stage-to-screen transition, they’ve infused their latest attempt with a narrative arc – one roadie’s apocalyptic journey through an unnamed city as civilization collapses into violence.
And strangely, it mostly works.
It’s impossible to view Through The Never as an entirely cohesive whole, which is one of its stumbles – it’s not quite seamless, though its cracks show less as it plays on. Instead, it’s a film beside a film, especially in the beginning, where the cuts between the concert and the storyline are most noticeable. When the band blasts through its opening numbers, the twin classics of “Creeping Death“ and “For Whom The Bell Tolls,” any longtime fan will immediately be hooked. Thirty years into their career, and fifteen past their prime, Metallica still shines on stage. It’s this band playing these songs that anyone buying tickets to Through The Never is really paying to see, and with that in mind, Metallica delivers admirably.
Technically, in terms of sight and sound, Never is a triumph. It looks great, both the concert and narrative portions. The audio recording is stellar; the live performances as visceral and intense as a videotaped concert could hope to be. Lars makes his usual array of funny troll faces, pounding the drums relentlessly and leaping from his seat at the end of each number to salute the crowd. James moves from mic to mic, working the audience like the rock god he’s become. Kirk and Robert rotate around their leaders, the former tearing off his solos with ease and the latter squatting and waddling in that caveman stance that hurts my aging knees to watch.
As much as possible, the narrative is built around the set list. During third number “Fuel,” the counterpoint story begins, and the viewer is pulled away to a parking garage, to a local crew kid dispatched to deliver gasoline to a stranded equipment truck carrying a mystery cargo described only as “something the band needs.” Presumably for good luck or as a greeting, the kid taps the creepy doll hanging from a noose around the rearview of his banged-up van and heads out into a city apparently wholly empty – even the parking lot at this sold-out show is devoid of cars. (That says something for the mass transit system in this mystery town, I suppose – the arena is packed solid.)
After a near-fatal collision destroys his van, to the tune of “Wherever I May Roam,” the kid wanders the abandoned streets, each subsequent song showing a world increasingly devolving into chaos. Turning one corner between abandoned skyscrapers, the kid walks head-on into a riot, into warring lines of cops and Mad Max misfits. Beneath “Cyanide,” he encounters the film’s chief villain, a horse-riding, gasmask-wearing, hammer-wielding goon, who strings his victims up from lampposts in the darkness. (The results of an earlier rampage serve as one the film’s most striking visual moments.)
(Hey, have you guys seen a panel truck?”)
By the time the kid locates the truck, you have to admire his resolve – anyone else would’ve told Metallica’s tour manager where to metaphorically stick his gas can and scampered off to endure the end of the world on their own terms. But not this guy: He’s lost his van, lost any semblance of a sane city outside, and he’s very nearly lost his life, but dedication to the ‘Tallica pushes him forward, and so he carries his gas can through the literal fires of a figurative Hell until he finally gets to the broken truck. He locates the band’s precious cargo – which is a small leather bag. What’s inside the bag is never shown – it’s Through The Never’s metallic MacGuffin, its 666 briefcase – but the viewer knows it’s important by the look on the kid’s face when he opens it.
But all is not well, and before he leaves the truck, the Gasmask Rider finds him. Our hero grabs the bag and his trusty gas can and flees as far as he can, before he’s cornered and forced to… set himself on fire? This is where the story breaks down, and from there, things get a bit ridiculous – immolation, rebirth, the sudden animation of the previously discarded creepy doll / van ornament, a decisive victory, a hammer blow that destroys most of the city and even shuts the band down, mimicking their “falling rigger” gag. (Faced with a collapsed lighting rig, two injured crew members, and multiple fires, Metallica does the responsible thing, which is to set up some more amps and play one last song to a wrecked arena of fans, who are probably now screaming for different reasons.)
After that first awkward hand-off during “Fuel,” the turns between concert and film are easier to transcend. Nevertheless, Never is foremost a concert film, and so it’s rightfully the show that takes center stage, and more accurately, it’s often the stage itself that steals the show. As the band rips through “Ride The Lightning,” an electric chair and Tesla coils descend from the lighting rig, shooting actual lightning above the band’s heads. At one point, digital blood spills across the screens that comprise the floor. The introduction to “One” sends lasers and pyro across the stage, the sound of a plane and the explosions timed in a dazzling enactment of a strafing run, while phantom soldiers march along the floor to their off-screen deaths. Justice’s cover statue is erected and exploded; Death Magnetic’s coffin-winged lighting truss swings, descends, spits fire, displays persons in coffins, dead and alive; a sea of crosses rises and falls. Described in a press release as “the largest indoor production in the history of touring,” this stage is some kind of monster of its own, one that the band has plans to tour with, and rightfully so. It’s a new level of Metallica performance.
(Never… take a job on Metallica’s lighting crew unless you’re adequately insured.)
In the end, the film achieves its primary goal: Through The Never is a new spin on the tired concert film. Although it doesn’t wholly succeed in blending its artistic aims at narrative filmmaking with its nature as a vehicle for new takes on classic tunes, it’s an interesting idea, and one enacted well enough to remain watchable throughout. In the end, Never is two films, each one with a fairly obvious theme. On the narrative side, it’s about the power of determination in the face of overwhelming chaos. It’s a young man, a metal fan, finding and fighting his way through whatever obstacles a harsh and brutal world may throw at him, and he does it all to a soundtrack of Metallica.
And what’s in the bag that’s so important? You’ll never know for sure, but of course, that’s the point of it – it’s whatever you need it to be, some intangible thing, something that isn’t really there anyway. I joked with my friend afterward that it was the spirit of Cliff Burton (tellingly, once the bag is returned, the band returns to jam on “Orion” to an audience of one bloodied and beaten roadie kid). But maybe in a way, it is just that, because to many (and seemingly even to the band themselves), Burton still represents the spirit of Metallica, of that street-level band of brothers that started this journey three decades ago.
So let’s hope that within that bag is Metallica’s metallic mojo, something that got lost on a road somewhere between one arena and the next. Let’s hope that because Never’s second theme is a simpler one, more direct, more obvious even than the first: Metallica still rocks, and this greatest hits set (minus the abominable “Memory Remains”) stands as some of the greatest metal ever made by one of the most important bands there ever was. There’s a reason they’re the biggest band in the history of our beloved sub-genre – five reasons, actually. All five of those are twenty years old or older now, and that’s why Metallica needs that bag, and they need it now. Great music is timeless; Metallica makes great music; and on stage, at least, this band is not yet out of gas.
But if they were, I know a kid who will cross Hell and high water to bring them more…
