A nondescript office building with blacked-out windows. There’s a middle school campus nearby. San Rafael, California. Present day.

Inside the office building, Metallica HQ, where the world’s biggest heavy-metal band rehearses, records, deals with merch, conducts business and other stuff.

John Gallagher went to HQ for a sit down with James Hetfield. Gallagher, the singer/bassist of New Wave of British Heavy Metal band Raven, and Hetfield, Metallica’s singer/guitarist, had a chat for an upcoming boxset project, to celebrate the anniversaries of Raven’s 1983 “All For One” album and the “Kill ‘Em All For One Tour,” the trek on which Raven took Metallica, then working their debut album “Kill ‘Em All,” out on the latter’s first-ever national tour.

James was excited to reminisce about their adventures together, Gallagher says. Metallica had been rehearsing, so Gallagher also got to see Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich and bassist James Trujillo although guitarist Kirk Hammett had already left for the day.

“James was awesome,” Gallagher tells me. “He’s so down to earth and said some really cool things about us (Raven) which was great to have (for the boxset material). And at the end I just said, ‘You know, we’re available if anything comes up with some of this anniversary stuff I know guys are gonna do. And he just said, ‘Well, we’ve got a gig soon coming up in Florida that hasn’t been announced Let me keep you posted. And then a couple of weeks later, we got the call. ‘You guys want to open for us at this show?’ Absolutely.”

Raven will open for Metallica Nov. 6 show at Hollywood, Florida venue Hard Rock Live for a special show honoring the late Jonny and Marsha Zazula. The Zazula were a married couple who cofounded Megaforce Records, the influential New York-based metal/rock label that released Metallica’s first two albums and now-vintage classics by the likes of Anthrax, Overkill, Mercyful Fate, Testament, King’s X and Ace Frehley. Rock radio personality Eddie Trunk, formerly of VH1 Classic’s beloved and bygone “That Metal Show,” is hosting the Zazula tribute.

In addition to Gallagher, Raven’s lineup features his brother Mark Gallaher on guitar/backing vocals and drummer Mike Heller. The Gallagher brothers formed the band in the mid ‘70s in Newcastle, and their classic ‘80s lineup also featured drummer Rob Hunter. Raven’s early albums were crucial DNA in what became thrash-metal.

Two days before their sold-out Metallica gig, Raven will headline a Nov. 4 all-ages show in Huntsville, Alabama at Fractal Brewing Project, address 3200 Leeman Ferry Road S.W. Opening acts include New York band Riot Act, featuring Riot guitarist Rick Ventura, and local metallers Temple of Blood and AATXE. On this and other stops on the band’s North American tour, Raven is performing “Wiped Out,” their blistering 1982 album, in its entirety. Tickets are $20 via tickets.bestofhuntsville.com.

“Once you reach something like 40 years it’s got some gravitas,” Gallagher says of their anniversary tour for the album. “It actually has meaning for us to go back and revisit, because although we’ve played many of the songs over the years, there’s quite a few we weren’t playing. And then there’s three on the album that will never play live. ‘To the Limit/To the Top,’ ‘Battle Zone’ and ‘UXB’ were never played live. Just because falling into album, tour, album, tour (cycle), you never played all the songs, even though we’ve always been very good at not having a static setlist. Doing this is a bit more radical. And it’s been a lot of fun because three quarters of our set it’s brand new.”

Raven will follow up their solid 2020 album “Metal City” with a new studio effort called “All Hell’s Breaking Loose.” “It’s got the songwriting, the musicianship, the energy, the power, the craziness. It’s all in there,” Gallagher says. “That will be out in May or June next year.” Check ravenlunatics.com for updates.

On a recent afternoon, Gallagher, who speaks in a laid-back English accent, checked in for this phone interview from the road in Portland, Maine. Edited excerpts below.

John, what’s a cool memory from Raven’s “Kill ‘Em All For One Tour” back in the ‘80s with Metallica?

It was guerrilla warfare. I mean, the bigger cities like, you know, playing Brooklyn. Chicago, San Francisco, L.A., yeah, great. Well attended great shows. But there were a lot of really sketchy gigs on that tour. [Laughs] We woke up one morning in Bald Knob, Arkansas. And after laughing about the name for about half an hour, realized the gig was in a natural amphitheater, with a little stage with totem poles and bugs about the size of your head floating around. And then all these trucks pulled up selling catfish and a bunch of locals had no idea who we were, absolutely no idea who Metallica were, but it was a great show. [Laughs]

The first Raven song I ever heard was “Don’t Need Your Money” off the great 1990 compilation album “New Wave of British Heavy Metal ‘79 Revisited.” What do you recall about cutting that track back then?

We did a live to two-track demo, which I did finally find and it’s on the boxset for “Rock Until You Drop,” it’s a four-CD boxset with all kinds of demos and some live shows on it. And the studio was just so bare bones and basic. It was not glamorous in in any shape, form or function. But we basically just went nuts, played it live. I did the vocals afterwards and Mark did the solo and that was it. Very straightforward and simple. And that was kind of the blueprint for “Rock Until You Drop” and to a lesser extent “Wiped Out” which was even more bare bones and crazy. A lot of that was written on the spot and just completely live you know. But the restrictions made us, I think, go even crazier. [Laughs]

Metallica has cited Raven as an influence. Where do you hear that influence most on Metallica’s music?

I think it’s a bit broader than saying like they nicked styles or stole actual riffs. That never happened. I think was the energy. Their first album was very thrashy and I think they took a lot from the tour, which inspired the (stylistic) changes on their second album. Where they were experimenting with slower songs, more powerful songs and more atmospheric things rather than just, you know, ice pick to the forehead.

And James said he’d sit there every night and watch us and go, “How do we get from here to there?” That was one of his quotes, which was very cool. They were just very thankful they got to tour with us, and learn from us, like many other people that they went out with. But it’s gratifying to hear for sure.

It’s so cool for the Metallica guys to tell it like it is, where they got it from. For those of us who weren’t there who just read the words, New Wave of British Heavy Metal, what was the camaraderie and competition like among the NWOBHM bands, which ranged from Raven and Diamond Head to Girlschool, Def Leppard and Tygers of Pan Tang? Or was that New Wave of British Heavy Metal label more of a press thing?

It definitely was more a press label. You know, people regard it now as if it was a club. And you were a card-carrying member and you pay your dues and had your New Wave of British Heavy Metal card. There was basically a bunch of kids who are disaffected with punk, they loved heavy-metal and hard-rock and started playing their own music.  And all of a sudden, they’re saying, “Oh, look, these bands sprung out of nowhere.” Well, they didn’t. We formed ‘74. (Fellow NWOBHM band) Saxon has been around probably since the early ‘70s, in some form. They’d been playing the same clubs that Judas Priest played before, and then we started playing after Saxon the working man’s clubs in the north of England.

And it basically just exploded in a sense, especially once Sounds Magazine came and saw a couple of gigs in London and declared it was a New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Then people were like, “Oh, that’s good. I want to get in on that.” So I mean, that happened. And we were already writing songs, been playing forever and we got the offer from Neat (Records).

A lot the (New Wave of British Heavy Metal) bands were not from the London area, and at the time, and it still is, the music business was centered in London. A&R people didn’t want to travel maybe 20 miles outside of London. That was, like, barbarians, some of that “Game of Thrones” going on through the north, you know, and they really had no interest whatsoever.

And the fact that there was a small independent label, like Neat, that somehow got a couple of records down to Sounds and a few other papers, and they loved them, and people started buying them. It turned everything on its head.

And Def Leppard kind of did the same thing from Sheffield. They printed their own single, they ended up getting reviewed and liked by the music papers in London and one thing led to another.

So, this kind of parallel with what happened with grunge, where you had a lot of bands isolated in the Northwest (U.S.), developing their own style, doing it for the love of the music, and all of a sudden, “Oh, wow, there’s this whole new movement.” And in that same way, given a year or two, you have a whole bunch of pretenders and second rates you’re jumping on the bandwagon.

What makes metal fans special?

Usually they’ve got more musical knowledge, or at least they’ve got more aptitude. A large part of the musical public, I think, have no clue what music really is. There’s a broad wave of emotion. And it’s like, “Oh, I like this. It’s got a good beat. I can dance to it.” And it’s just background stuff.

Music’s not background stuff for most heavy-metal fans, it’s front and center. It moves them in the way that good music really should, you know? And they have this affinity for having the physical article.

They’ve got more attention span than your general music listener these days. They’re not interested in getting a quick download. They want to know who did what. Who was playing guitar on this, who was the producer? Where was it recorded? Why did this happen? Why did that happen? These arcane details make up the whole experience if sitting down with a physical record or the CD and playing and reading the liner notes and being taken on that journey. And that’s special thing.

And it’s been chipped away at over the last 10, 20 years, where they try to just, you know, turn it into this Spotify horrible experience, which is just against everything we love the music for, really. It’s faceless. And, of course, it’s completely demonetized as the whole business where they (streaming services) make all the money and the artists make absolutely nothing, which is disgusting, to be honest. It’s theft.

What do you love about your brother Mark Gallagher’s guitar playing with Raven? And can you talk about the challenges he’s overcome?

Yeah, well, he’s probably got more fire in his playing than most other players out there. He’s very spontaneous. All of his solos, I mean, especially live, he’ll have a couple of touched on riffs, but most of it’s completely spur of the moment, top of his head, because that’s where his influences lie. You know, people like Richie Blackmore, and Jeff Beck and people who would just turn it on like right there and then. There’s a lot of craziness in his playing too. But he’s just a fabulous player and has such an identifiable sound.

He went through a lot. In 2001, a building fell on him, crashing his legs, he nearly died. And then they were going to cut his legs off, and then he was never going to walk again. And over the next three or four years, he proved them all wrong. You know we did a few gigs with him in a wheelchair and then he had hug leg brace. He’s still got some issues from it, which he’s having to deal with. Currently, he’s got a bad ankle where there’s no cartilage in it. He’s had some stem cell treatments, and maybe he’ll have to have a joint replacement at some point, but it’s inspiration. He’s the stubbornest man I know. [Laughs]

What was special about Megaforce Records cofounder Johnny Z, since Raven is doing the gig with Metallica honoring he and his wife Marsha?

Well, he changed our lives. And changed so many other people’s lives too, obviously Metallica, Anthrax, the list goes on. Jonny was like a hellfire preacher. He really was. He caught a vision.

He got in touch with us. He was running a little flea market, record store in New Jersey, and says, “I’m putting this show on in Staten Island and I want to bring you guys over to do that and a few other shows,” which at the time was completely untenable, insane and like ridiculous. And he did it.

And he would just come up with these things like, “We’re going to do this. We’re going to do this. We’ll bring you back next year, we’ll do a headline tour. We’ve got the biggest band in San Francisco to open for you.”

There were a lot of big bands coming out of San Francisco and the one that wasn’t on our mains was a band called Metallica who we’d never heard of. And he sent us the cassette tape, “No Life Till Leather.” And it was like, “These guys sound great. They sound like Motorhead on crack. We’ll take them out and that will be great,” and that all went forward from there. Jonny would just be relentless in fighting for his bands and trying to get things to happen.

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