Unforeseen Consequences

Well, I’m finished. I have successfully completed my Bucket List of concerts. I saw Metallica last night.

My relationship with Metallica is a long one. Metallica was the first band I ever liked. Theirs was the first popular music I listened to consciously. I learned the concepts of “album”, “single” and “record label” in the context of listening to Metallica.

This was about ten years ago. I know I’m way late to this party, but cut me some slack; Metallica was formed before I was even born. They released the Black Album while I was learning to talk.

I still remember exactly how I got started. Back then I was in seventh grade. One of my fellow seventh graders’ popular break-time pastimes was using the school’s computers to watch dumb things on the Internet. (I imagine this tradition is being kept up at my old school.) One time, someone directed my attention to campchaos.com, the purveyors of a series of animated cartoons parodying the ongoing legal kerfuffle between Metallica and Napster. So I duly watched this series, and out of curiosity (and not fully aware of the irony), I acquired a Metallica song, one that the cartoons had mentioned, using Napster. This song was “Sanitarium”.

My thoughts when I listened to “Sanitarium” were not sophisticated. All I could think was, “Wow, this sounds really really cool.” And that was it; I was hooked. I bought “Master of Puppets”. I listened to it a whole bunch. I started talking to people about it. Metallica improved my standing with some people (back in seventh grade, it came as a surprise to everyone at school that I might possibly be cool in any way), harmed it with others. There was a long period of time in high school when, for some reason, declaring that one liked Metallica was equivalent to declaring that one liked ballet. Now, a lot of people to whom I declare a liking for Metallica respond by saying, “Me too! Metallica is great!” I believe that what’s happened is that in high school, Metallica was long passé, and now, in the same way that old fashions become trendy again, they have made the transition into “classic” metal, and are once again cool.

So Metallica was my entrance into the world of popular music, and even now, though I have other bands I like more, Metallica is still a reliable standby. Sometimes I just need some loud shit I can headbang to, and on that front, Metallica delivers like few others can.

Against this background, you can maybe understand why my expectations going into the concert were pretty high, and why I was let down just a little bit. That’s not to say it wasn’t enjoyable to see Metallica live; on the contrary, it was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to. The whole evening was a series of surprises, both pleasant and unpleasant.

First was a pleasant surprise: I had expected the crowd to be composed largely of the same kind of Scary Aging Metalheads that I complained about at the Def Leppard concert, except scarier because this was no tight-pants-and-power-ballads metal band, by golly; no, this was METALLICA, BITCHEZ. But it was not like this. Almost all of the people I saw were pretty much normal, and a surprising number of them were younger than I am. Even now, twenty years past their prime, Metallica is still gaining new fans. Almost everyone was wearing a Metallica t-shirt, which I have always felt is lame — don’t wear a band’s t-shirt to their concert. I saw one Iron Maiden t-shirt, and I gave the wearer a nod of approval; I also saw a Fender Guitars shirt, which would have been an inspired choice if Metallica actually used Fender guitars; as it is (they use Gibson), it just looked clueless. There were a few Scary Aging Metalheads, but they were a small minority. I actually have what I think is a fairly sound theory about why this is: it’s because of the whole “selling-out” business in the ’90s. Metallica had legions of fans in the ’80s, when they were at their peak, but then in the ’90s they started to diversify from pure thrash metal into more mainstream-friendly strains of music. This alienated a lot of their hardest-core fans, and I think those guys still remain alienated. So now, Metallica’s fanbase is largely composed of the more forgiving fans from the ’80s (who tend much less towards the Scary Aging Metalhead model of aging than the kind of people who would call what Metallica did “selling out” and actually stop going to their concerts because of it) and also of people like me: too young to give a shit about all that and just there for the good music, old and new, thrash metal and heavy alt rock.

Next came an unpleasant surprise: there were openers. I got there at 7; Metallica didn’t take the stage till after 9. I arrived almost at the end of the first opener’s set. They’re called Volbeat. The frontman had a funny accent that I couldn’t place and their music was not interesting. The second opener was Machine Head, whom I had heard of before — ironically, from a high school friend who was among the people who questioned my masculinity for liking Metallica. Machine Head is of the “RURR-RURR-RURR” screamy-growling double-bass-drumming type of metal; it sounds to me like death metal but Wikipedia disagrees and who am I to disagree with Wikipedia. During their set, several mosh pits started to develop on the floor. I was not down there, but I had a pretty good view of the proceedings and it was pretty funny. It really is just a clot of people who shove each other around a bunch. I had never really believed that such things existed, but there they were, right in front of my very eyes. I witnessed several people get manhandled away by security guys, and I was amused. Machine Head’s frontman seemed to enjoy this. He got very happy when he noticed the mosh pits. In between songs he blathered about stuff and said “fuck” a lot and just generally stayed on the stage for far too long.

Next a pleasant surprise: the tech. I feared I’d been spoiled by Trans-Siberian Orchestra a few weeks previous and no matter how many lights and flame jets Metallica brought out, they’d be overshadowed by TSO’s technical performance. But no: Metallica had a full set of lasers, ginormous flame jets, tons of lights, smoke machines, floor lights casting enormous shadows of the guys on the walls, movable lighting rigs, and actual dudes sitting on the lighting rigs above the stage, controlling follow spots. I very much wanted to be one of those dudes. I figure if this software thing doesn’t work out for me, I’m definitely going to become a roadie.

All throughout the concert, a somewhat unpleasant surprise: the setlist. It went as follows: Ecstasy of Gold (the traditional pre-concert warmup); That Was Just Your Life; The End of the Line; Ride the Lightning; Harvester of Sorrow; Fade to Black; Broken, Beat and Scarred; Cyanide; Sad But True; One; My Apocalypse; The Day that Never Comes; Master of Puppets; Fight Fire with Fire; Nothing Else Matters; Enter Sandman; Helpless (a cover); Motorbreath; and Seek and Destroy. Notice anything about that? Yes, six songs from Death Magnetic, three from the Black Album, two from And Justice For All, one (!) from Master of Puppets, three from Ride the Lightning, and two from Kill ‘Em All (plus one from Garage Days Re-revisited, which doesn’t really count). To put it another way: as many songs from Death Magnetic as from their three best albums put together (and this is true for pretty much all reasonable sets of “three best albums”; I’m calculating it based on Lightning, Puppets and Justice). Zero from Load and ReLoad, and it’s not like both of those albums were total washouts. Thankfully they seem to have realized that St. Anger should just be quietly forgotten (although I have been curious to see what “Frantic” would be like if performed live — the answer is not too bad if you ignore Kirk attempting to sing), but I think Load and ReLoad deserved at least one song between the two of them.

But really, come on — I know this is a Death Magnetic tour, but how in the name of all that is metal can you justify only including one song from Master of Puppets, one of the greatest heavy metal albums in the history of the genre? That’s just shameful. Seriously, every other song on the album is great. It’s the only Metallica album where every single song would have made me happy had it shown up in the setlist. And to just include one song, in favor of six from Death Magnetic and one from the EP of covers they made when they were bored — well, it blows my fucking mind.

This isn’t to say that Death Magnetic sucks; far from it. They chose mostly good songs from Death Magnetic, and they do sound good live. It’s just that Death Magnetic does not hold a candle to Master of Puppets. Nobody would have shed any tears if Death Magnetic had never been made. Master of Puppets is the pinnacle of an entire genre of music. It is a masterpiece. It blows my fucking mind.

In fact, take a look at the setlist from that 2006 tour that I linked to above. Here it is: Creeping Death, Fuel, Harvester of Sorrow, Frantic, The Unforgiven, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Orion, Master of Puppets, Fade to Black, Battery, Sad But True, Nothing Else Matters, One, Enter Sandman, a preview of a song that would eventually be on Death Magnetic, and Seek & Destroy. That is what I call a setlist. One from Kill ‘Em All, three from Lightning, three from Puppets, two from Justice, four from the Black Album, one from ReLoad and one from St. Anger. We can forgive the one from St. Anger because it’s halfway decent and St. Anger was their newest album at the time (given that, I think including only one showed impressive restraint). And the rest? By gum, they got almost all of the classics and didn’t get any filler. That is how you make a damn setlist, people.

On a Death Magnetic tour, I think three from Death Magnetic would have been a good number. Instead of the additional three, I would have taken two from Puppets (Sanitarium and Battery sound like excellent choices) and one from Load or ReLoad (Fuel, probably). And there you go, you get to promote your new album as well as satisfy demanding wankers like myself who waited for ten goddamn years to see you on a stage a hundred feet away from their face, playing the songs that got them started liking music in the first place.

OK, that’s more than enough grumbling about the setlist. On to more pleasant surprises: Metallica have not slowed down in their old age. They play their songs significantly faster live, and they all have the chops to do it. Well, except James can’t really sing like he used to, but honestly, that’s been true for many years. That ship has sailed. And let’s cut him some slack; he’s playing some pretty fast guitar at the same time, and he plays it well. Metallica’s stage antics generally seemed nowhere near as ridiculous as those of Def Leppard, at which concert I could not shake the perception of a bunch of deluded midlifers acting like morons. Metallica can still act like a thrash metal band and be taken seriously as a thrash metal band, at least in a concert. The sound was excellent, especially on the drums. And my air drumming worked out particularly well, since Lars uses the same drumkit layout that I use in my imagination when I air drum.

And after all that yelling, let’s not forget — I finally saw Metallica in concert. This has been a long time coming. And even if the concert had completely sucked, I wouldn’t regret going. Come on — you gotta do this kind of thing while you can. Those guys aren’t getting any younger.

(It is really delightfully ironic, though, isn’t it, that I became a such a devoted Metallica fan because of Napster? The very thing Metallica worked so hard to stamp out of existence? I always thought the “people use filesharing to discover music, and then they spend money” argument was total bunk but I just realized I’m a supporting example. What do you know?)