As the title of this DVD already reveales, this DVD concentrates on the early days of Hades. This DVD is divided in 3 parts, the live footage from ’88, the behind the metal documentary and the bonus part. As for the bonus part, we can skip that very quickly! It’s just one crappy shot video-clip from the last album. Not worth watching though!

The live footage part is pretty o.k.! The live footage was shot on a supporting show for Manowar, Nuclear Assault and Wargasm on New Year’s Day in 1988 in Boston. The great thing is that at that time, Hades just released their debut album and were working on their second one, so we get to see only songs from the first two records. The quality of the footage is decent, but in a bootleg VHS-tape kind of way. Decent picture and sound, nothing more nothing less! Musically this band is on the same path as bands like Overkill, Anthrax, with a high pitched vocalist. The show lasts for about 30 minutes.

The best part of the DVD is definitely the ‘Behind The Metal’ documentary. This whole documentary gives a good insight of how the thrash-metal scene was evolving in that time. We see all the present and ex-members from Hades, explaining the history and the birth of Hades. Really fun is to see the embryo-phase of the band in 1980, being a cover band doing Judas Priest, Motorhead, Iron Maiden covers. By these stories, we see slowly how Hades evolved from a cover-band into the thrash machine they were at the end! These interviews are filmed in a irritating way though, with the camera-man flying constantly from one angle to another angle. Luckily the rest of the documentary is filled in with loads of old live footage, pictures, old MTV ‘Headbangers Ball’ material and more. This makes the documentary interesting. Another interesting thing is that they talk with all the present/ex-members, about what they do now in their present days. It’s funny to hear that they old bass-player became a taekwondo teacher. I love the build -up in this documentary from the old history to the new history.

If you want to find out more about the old thrash-metal days, then this is a pretty decent DVD to buy. If you want to see some professional filmed live footage, I suggest you look for another DVD.