By Jon Wiederhorn

When fans first hear about Metallica's new 3D concert film Through the Never (out September 27), which interweaves live footage of the band's biggest songs with a surreal narrative story line, they might imagine a turbo-charged, high-tech production resembling the classic 1976 Led Zeppelin film The Song Remains the Same. Surprisingly, drummer Lars Ulrich said the structure of that movie was exactly what Metallica wanted to avoid.

"I don't mean to be disrespectful, but [we felt strongly that] it shouldn't be The Song Remains the Same," he said September 23 at New York's Walter Reade Theater at a post-screening Q&A moderated by New York Times writer Ben Ratliff. "We don't want to be in the non-concert part. We don't see ourselves acting."

Metallica also didn't want to create the kind of movie where a documentarian tags along with a band. "[We decided] it shouldn't be in the infomercial style that a lot of the current ones are, where they follow a band on the road, and here they are on and off airplanes. There wasn't a blueprint for this movie, and that's what made it so hard to sell in Hollywood."

Throughout their career, Metallica have frequently avoided the obvious path. After the progressive thrash album …And Justice For All, they slowed down, simplified their attack, and released The Black Album. Then they delved into alternative, blues, and classic rock with Load and Reload; and experimented with improvisational songwriting, unconventional editing, and challenging sound recording on St. Anger. They even recorded a much-derided impromptu double album with Lou Reed, Lulu.

"We’re four guys and we're always thinking, 'Let’s be creative and try something different,'" Ulrich said. "The model of album, tour, album, tour is a little old. There are so many other ways to express yourself now. There are festivals [like our Orion Festival], and Lou Reed calls, and movies. There are so many different things we want to do. We're just so curious, and we want to live in these things and experience them, and that invigorates us so when we go back to making another record or writing a song we have all of these experiences to draw from."

The first challenge in making Through the Never was picking a director. Metallica were determined to make an explosive concert film that combined stage set elements from the past 30 years of performances with a narrative that told a complete story. But it was hard to convince traditionalists that such an approach would elevate Through the Never above other concert movies. "We spoke to a lot of different directors," Ulrich said. "A lot of 'A-list' people you’d know by first name didn't quite get the concept. They didn't understand how to mix these two worlds. There were a lot of questions and not a lot of passion."

Then Metallica met Nimród Antal, a Hungarian filmmaker, writer, and actor whose credits include Vacancy and Predators. "He was the first guy we talked to who really had passion and was as crazy as we were," Ulrich said. "He didn’t frown. He didn't try to talk us out of what we were thinking. He had this kind of madness in his eyes. Metallica was a really big part of his upbringing in Eastern Europe. They helped shape his youth, and we felt he really understood what this band is about. He was ready to jump and didn't ask about parachutes or where we were landing."

Antal constructed the story line about a band roadie named Trip, played without dialogue by Dane DeHaan, who gets sent on an errand to deliver a container of gasoline to a stalled truck. Before he leaves, he pops a pill, then rapidly descends down a rabbit hole into a post-apocalyptic landscape filled with rioting mobs, retaliating policemen, hanging bodies, and a gargantuan hammer-wielding, gas mask-wearing beast on a horse who destroys everything he sees. As if that isn't bad enough, the kid gets into a slow-mo, glass-shattering car crash (which looks amazing in 3D) sets himself on fire and ends up mysteriously underwater. Then there's the climactic, block-leveling battle between Trip and the Horseman. And all the while, the band and its crowd are rocking out, oblivious to the carnage.

"I believe you can have this bubble of positive energy within a show – within a Metallica show especially – and then beyond those walls there could be a number of [crazy] things going off in the world right down the street," said bassist Robert Trujillo. "That exists, and there’s a reality to that."