I tell you what, Metallica is the way to start your concert year. Sure it was at the end of the month and we had been waiting for it for a long time but it was worth it.

Let me start with the setlist:

1. That Was Just Your Life
2. The End of the Line
3. Creeping Death
4. Ride the Lightning
5. One
6. Broken, Beat and Scarred
7. Cyanide
8. Sad But True
9. Wherever I May Roam
10. All Nightmare Long
11. The Day That Never Comes
12. Master of Puppets
13. Blackened
14. Nothing Else Matters
15. Enter Sandman

And the encore:

1. Last Caress (Misfits cover)
2. Motorbreath
3. Seek and Destroy

As you can see they played a good amount of classic songs, but definitely showcase their new material, the playing was hard and fast as a Metallica show should be. Mind you we didn’t get good tickets but even up in the rafters the noise and the beat were pounding and heavy ( oh and i could feel the flames! ). Seeing Machine Head open, you get a sense of how hard it is to play on such a large stage for an audience that big! It seemed almost unfair for them, they looked so small, not to mention that the sound was muddled where we were … can you have muddled and too loud at the same time? well it seemed like that.

When Metallica jumped on stage you could see the potential brought forth in that kind of stage, with James moving around the stage to each microphone on the perimeter, and Robert Trujillo doing his troll under the bridge scaring the children walk around the stage ( that man is intimidating when he gets going ), Lars in the middle playing to the crowd and  Kirk, well Kirk was just what you expect, the cool and collected guitarist, to cool for the rest of us ( he is mind you ).

Overall, despite hanging out with the pigeons in the rafters the show was phenomenal, enjoy the pictures.

of note: I would like to thank Nikon for not sponsoring this post, but making a camera that survived a fall and rolling under the stage pyrotechnics. I am glad Bobby Talamine didn’t hurt himself, but would have liked to see him flailing to the ground and thankful for rubber matting.