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The
Sword
The latest in a
long line of bands charged with the daunting task of opening a Metallica
arena show are Texans The Sword and while they don’t fair badly
tonight they do fail to make much of an impact. The Sword have some real
heavy riff monsters in their repertoire but the mixture of a murky sound
and such a large arena does them no favours tonight and overall the band
fail to fill Metallica’s giant stage. Although not suited the big
arenas just yet, The Sword are a good band and in a club setting they
would be great.
Machine
Head
A band more suited to the big stage and veterans of the Metallica
support slot are Machine Head. They whip the crowd into a frenzy and go
down an absolute storm as they always do but anyone who saw them on the
Black Crusade Tour or supporting Slipknot a few months ago will get a
sense of deja-vu about tonight. There is no doubt that Machine Head put
in a great performance tonight but it’s a performance that’s been
done several times in the past 18 months and unless Machine Head make
some changes to their setlist before they support Metallica again at
Knebworth in August then even the die-hards may start to get a bit
restless.
Setlist:
Clenching The Fists Of Dissent, Imperium, Halo, Beautiful Morning,
Descend The Shades Of Night, Davidian.
Metallica
Like many others, I’d only seen Metallica at festivals before
which makes the sight of them playing to ‘only’ 10,000 people in an
arena seem like somewhat of an ‘intimate’ show. It certainly is a
different spectacle altogether seeing Metallica at their own arena
shows. We are treated to an unexpected and spectacular Pink Floyd-esque
light show before the metal gods themselves hit the stage and
ferociously launch into the opening salvo of their latest masterpiece Death
Magnetic – ‘That Was Just Your Life’ and ‘The End Of The
Line’. A further four songs from DM
are aired tonight and it really is a testament to just how good the
new material is when over the half the album is performed in favour of
so many classics that Metallica could have included from their back
catalogue and both the fans and the band know it. In stark contrast to
their last arena tour in support of the woefully disappointing St.
Anger, when only two new
songs were played, tonight the band sound rejuvenated with the
confidence in their new material and this shows on stage. Metallica are
a well-oiled machine tonight – tight as hell and also clearly having
the time of their lives, none more so than ‘new’ bassist Rob
Trujillo. Despite having been in the band for six years now, he
seemingly still can’t believe he is part of the biggest metal band on
the planet – never has a man been so over-joyed to be somewhere.
Given that the Death Magnetic material
was always going to take up a large chunk of the set, it was a welcome
surprise to hear such seldom-heard gems as ‘Ride The Lightning’ and
an incredibly moving and outstanding version of ‘ The Unforgiven’.
But the biggest sing-along of the night undoubtedly came at the end of
‘The Memory Remains’ which seemingly lasted about ten minutes, much
to the enjoyment of fans and band alike. Of course the classics are
superb too, ‘One’ comes complete with a pyro display that the fans
in the second tier can feel the heat from, ‘Sad But True’ still has
one of the heaviest bottom-ends and ‘Nothing Else Matters’ is still
the finest ballad that never gets referred to as one. Metallica have
been flawless tonight, hopefully they won’t leave it another decade
before another full arena tour.
Setlist:
That
Was Just Your Life, The End Of The Line, Ride The Lightning, The Memory
Remains, One, Broken, Beat And Scarred, Cyanide, Sad But True, The
Unforgiven, All Nightmare Long, Kirk Hammett Solo, The Day That Never
Comes, Master Of Puppets, Nothing Else Matters, Enter Sandman. Encore:
Am I Evil?/Helpless, Seek And Destroy.
Review
by Adam G. |