Metallica live in concert

The review you've all been waiting for, written by guest blogger and unabashed headbanger, Ryan:

(Clockwise from top right: James Hetfield, lead vocals and rhythm guitar; Robert Trujillo, bass; Lars Ulrich, drums; and Kirk Hammett, lead guitar)

When I learned last fall that Metallica, the formative thrash metal band from California, was making a tour stop in Washington, DC, in support of its newest studio album, Death Magnetic, I decided to take the plunge. Sure, the tickets cost me an arm and a leg, but Miriam approved the sale (of my limbs) and even volunteered to go with me. She had only the faintest notion of what she was getting into.

(Before the concert)

Last Thursday was the big day. Miriam picked me up at work at about 6:45 pm, and we spent the next 45 minutes hunting for a parking space. Finally finding an open garage, we stopped for dinner. Technically, the concert started at 7:00 pm, but I wasn't overly eager to catch the opening bands: The Sword, a fairly new stoner metal group whose sound is heavily influenced by Black Sabbath (the video for "Maiden, Mother & Crone" can be viewed here), and Machine Head, a groove metal band from northern California.

When we arrived at the Verizon Center near 8:00 pm, Machine Head was on stage. They were loud and that's about it. The lead singer, who has a very limited vocabulary (mostly limited to words that start with "f") and doesn't seem to be the brightest of lights, tried his level best to rouse the crowd. He didn't succeed. Inexplicably, though, he told us that we were the best crowd on the entire tour. Either he was lying or Machine Head has played in front of sleeping audiences in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Detroit.

Our seats weren't bad--or at least the seats we decided to occupy weren't bad. When we arrived at our assigned row, our seats were filled by two men who I would guess had once been members of Hells Devils (the more violent branch of the motorcycle gang Hells Angels). We decided to play it safe and take some empty seats nearby.

At around 9:00 pm, the arena lights dimmed, the capacity crowd of 20,000 began to buzz, and the strains of "The Ecstasy of Gold" (from the western "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly") filled the air. A few moments later, lasers began to flash, spread, and swirl, and we heard the opening notes of "That Was Just Your Life." For next two hours and fifteen minutes, Metallica hardly took a breath, shredding through 18 songs, including three encore tunes. All four band members were in fine form, especially lead singer and rhythm guitarist James Hetfield, who was a ball of energy on stage (the stage is set in the middle of the arena floor, allowing band members to rotate positions), and bassist Robert Trujillo, who crab-walks as he plays.

(At the concert)

I was a bit disappointed with some of my fellow concert-goers who chose to remain seated during the entire set, but Miriam and I chanted, shook our fists, and headbanged like nobody's business. (She nearly lost control rocking out to the song "Enter Sandman." ["Only, like, the best Metallica song EVER! It was crazy awesome!"--side commentary from Miriam.]) We didn't get caught up in any mosh pits, our hearing is in fairly good shape (as we left the arena, I did notice that I didn't have any hearing in my right ear), and we had a good time.

I've included a review of the concert that ran in the Washington Post. Other concert photos I liked are posted here and here.

Metallica, Still Putting the Pedal to the Metal

By Dave McKenna
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, January 17, 2009; C02

The members of Metallica learned this week they'll be in this year's class of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. No act this heavy has ever received that honor.

On durability and CD sales alone, the induction is deserved. Metallica is huge, after all, and has seemingly been huge forever: After the release of its latest record, "Death Magnetic," the band was cited by Billboard as the first group ever to have five CDs debut at No. 1. (The Beatles, U2Dave Matthews, none of whom ever detuned an E string to add crunch, are the only others with four.) and

But for Metallica, which put the wrecking ball to the wall between fringe and mainstream long before there was a Nirvana, these latest recognitions aren't as righteous as, say, having its logo ironed onto Beavis's T-shirt all those years ago.

So at Verizon Center on Thursday, a building packed with 20,000 real-life Beavises of varying ages and genders, no one in the band even mentioned the induction or the chart-topping status.

Instead, they delivered a punishing, cathartic set heavy with new songs -- among them "That Was Just Your Life" and "The End of the Line," which each clocked in at more than seven minutes -- that were as fast and furious as the stuff that broke the band out of Southern California 25 years ago.

Metallica's bond with its audience remains staggering. Guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield, who of all the band's veterans has retained the most edge, gets whatever he wants from the flock. Hetfield asked the fans to scream "Obey your master!" during "Master of Puppets," and everybody in the building complied with every decibel they could muster.

In return, Hetfield gave his all, whether while shrieking angry-man lyrics with astonishing amounts of menace or down-stroking the bass strings on his guitar at warp speed to provide a rhythm for lead ax man Kirk Hammett.

Bassist Robert Trujillo, the newest member, enthralled the crowd by stomping across the stage during the lead-heavy "Harvester of Sorrow."

Drummer Lars Ulrich, who ranks as Denmark's most popular artistic export since Hamlet, has alienated fans with his anti-metal behavior in the past: No musician was more outspoken against file-sharing during the Napster debate in 2000, and Ulrich made the news recently by getting $14 million at auction for a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat. But on this night, Ulrich only enthralled the followers by keeping his mouth shut and his kick pedal busy.

If Metallica showed its age at all, it was in the gimmicky flourishes that have been added to the live show over the years. During a reprise of Metallica's heavy 1989 gem, "One," huge coffin-shaped lighting rigs dropped slowly from the roof and dangled over Hetfield's head. That war-tale song is horrifying enough without any special effects, and the impact of the hovering coffins was scary only to those who remember Hetfield's previous run-ins with wayward props -- he was badly burned when a flash pot blew up on him during a 1992 tour.

Corniest of all were the hundreds of large black beach balls that descended from the rafters during the night-ending "Seek and Destroy," a tune so heavy it could get John Tesh to head-bang and flash the devil's horns with both hands. The ball drop created a very un-Metallica scene that one might have found at a Jimmy Buffett concert. Well, if 20,000 Beavises showed up at a Jimmy Buffett concert.