“I was in the front row. Everybody was pushing and things got really violent”: This is what it was like watching Metallica on their first European tour, as explained by a fellow thrash metal star

Kreator singer/guitarist Mille Petrozza saw Metallica during the future heavy metal superstars’ first tour of Europe in 1984.

In a new interview with the Heavy Stories podcast, Petrozza – who co-founded his thrash band in Essen, Germany in 1982 – looks back on watching Metallica’s set at Dutch festival Aardschokdag, where they supported New Wave Of British Heavy Metal favourites Venom in front of just 3,000 people.

“The headliner band was Venom, Metallica was before that, and before that was a band called Tokyo Blade … it was New Wave Of British Heavy Metal stuff: very early, pre-everything metal,” he remembers. “I was a teenager; I was like 15 years old or something.”

The frontman adds that he was “probably the only one in the audience who liked Venom better than Metallica”, with the younger band already being well on their way to international success following the release of 1983 debut album Kill ’Em All. However, all that excitement around them led to their set becoming a violent affair.

“Everybody was really rough! The audience got really rough when Metallica went on,” Petrozza continues. “I was in the front row. Everybody was really pushing and things got really violent. When Venom came out, everybody was in the back.”

He finishes with a laugh: “They had a big hype! I was a fan of their records, but I was still such a big Venom fan that I thought Venom was better, which they were probably not.”

Metallica’s star would only shine brighter with the releases of 1984’s Ride The Lightning and 1986’s Master Of Puppets. By the time that they started touring to promote 1988’s …And Justice For All, they were already one of the biggest metal bands on the planet, but it was the release of their self-titled 1991 album (AKA The Black Album) that sent them truly stratospheric. The record, produced by Bob Rock, topped the charts in 10 countries and has been certified Diamond twice in the United States.

Kreator have also enjoyed a long and successful career. Their 1986 album Pleasure To Kill was critically acclaimed and is now considered a thrash classic. Together with countrymen Sodom, Destruction and Tankard, they comprised the teutonic Big 4: the German equivalent to the American movement featuring Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax.

Like Metallica, the band are an unlikely part of the mainstream in their home country. In 2017, their album Gods Of Violence topped the German charts; reissues of Pleasure To Kill and 1989’s Extreme Aggression charted the same year. Also in 2017, the band’s song Pleasure To Kill became an integral plot point in the hit Netflix science-fiction series Dark.

“I wasn’t expecting it,” Petrozza says of the needle drop. “The people that were developing the show told me about it and I was like, ‘What do you want? Do you need a soundtrack? Go ahead! You can have it!’ Then I was invited to the premiere in Berlin, and then I saw how they put it into the [series] and what happened, and I was like, ‘This is next-level shit!’”

Petrozza published a German-language memoir – Your Heaven, My Hell – last year via Ullstein Verlag. Kreator are also the subject of a new documentary called Hate & Hope, which has been screened at multiple film festivals. The band’s 16th album, Krushers Of The World, came out in January and they will embark on a headlining tour of Europe later this month.

Listen to the full interview with Petrozza below.

The new issue of Classic Rock magazine features the inside story of the making of Metallica's Master Of Puppets album. It's available now.