There is no argument that Metallica have emerged as one of the most important metal bands of the past 30 years. With the release in 1983 of their debut album, Kill 'Em All, the quartet laid down the groundwork for a new type of metal that was faster and heavier than what anybody had heard before. Three years later, they released the follow-up, Master of Puppets, and sold an astonishing one million albums around the world without benefit of a single or any type of label support.

This book details those very early years and in fact predates those albums by chronicling the actual births. Birth School Metallica Death, Volume 1 lays out the chronology of the band up to and including their breakthrough fifth album, which is most universally known as The Black Album. Here, the authors outline what they'll be covering:

This book is the first of a two-volume biography. It spans the period from the childhoods of James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich to the point at which Metallica stood ready to secure the title deeds to the planet with the release of 'The Black Album.' For the authors it has been an excursion into the world of a 'family' that at times resembles a mafia organization, occasionally a cult, and often the coolest gang in the world... Volume two of Birth School Metallica Death, set for publication in the autumn of 2014, will document the band's journey into a future as yet unwritten, their status as the Led Zeppelin of their generation assured. No rock band will ever again come to equal their success.