From thrash to cash: Forging and legitimizing Dutch metal

When San Francisco metal-heads Metallica visited Europe to promote their first album Kill ’Em All in 1984—predating metal’s defining year 1985— three out of fourteen concerts in their Seven Dates of Hell tour were scheduled in the Netherlands. Metallica introduced Dutch audiences to a new, even more extreme, offshoot of heavy metal music: thrash metal. In a recent television documentary on one of these early concerts, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich said that from the onset, Dutch audiences proved to be very receptive of the band: “Holland was really, I think, the first place where it felt like Metallica connected at a deeper level” (Talma, 2014). Ever since, the Dutch metal scene has had a track record of providing a warm and welcoming stage for foreign and domestic metal acts.