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-out of 14 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.