December 13, 2008
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This past Friday night, me and my friends went to go see the mighty Metallica at the newly opened Citizens Business Bank Arena in the city of Ontario, California. The CBB Arena is a new venue and it’s actually really nice. It’s not as big as other arenas, but at least it looks like the “nosebleed” seats are still close enough to the floor, that you can still get a great view of the concert. Plus it has free parking, so I got to say that I’m impressed.
Due to somebody dropping out from going with us, we actually had one extra pit (Floor) ticket for the show, that we were considering selling it to an interested party. The funny thing was that we kept seeing on the street corners, a combo of one person who needs tickets and one person next to him who is selling tickets. That smells of cops trying to trap scalpers, so we just had to bite the bullet and kept the extra ticket as a really expensive souvenier for the show. In the process of going inside, I could hear people complaining about how cold it was outside, but I was walking in with just a t-shirt and jeans because if you’ve been to a metal concert before, you know it gets really hot inside. Once we were inside, we stood in the long line for the men’s restroom (typical for a metal concert), and then we proceeded to find a spot inside at the same time that Lamb Of God was finishing their set (The Sword played before them). There was a surprising number of people that had pit tickets, that the whole floor was packed. I ended staying mostly by the side rails towards the back, so that I wasn’t completely smooshed up next to people.
Metallica started their set a little after 9PM, and they opened with the first two tracks from their latest album Death Magnetic. Just from those two songs I was already head banging like a mad man and singing along as loud as I can until my throat hurts. The song that really got me going crazy nuts however was when they played “All Nightmare Long,” which is my favorite song off their latest album. Although I was in the pit and technically closer to the band on stage, I actually did not really see them perform that much, because there were a lot of people in front of me, blocking my view. I may have been better off just having seats to get a good view of the concert. Speaking of views, Metallica really had a nice display going, with some really cool Coffin shaped objects that hung from the ceiling and moved around the place, plus they also had laser lights coming out from them. Man those laser lights that were highlighting the stage were great to look at, I also have to say that the pyro effects were stellar what with the multi-color flames popping out.
The last fifteen to twenty minutes of Metallica’s performance was when things really went crazy for me. A friend of my friend convinced us to get much closer to the stage, and pretty much right next to (or actually at) one of the mosh pits. That area definitely had a different vibe from where we were originally staying, because this spot held the true metal fans, the people who look like they were straight from the early to mid 1980s thrash metal days. Mosh pits, crowd surfing, and just feeling like you are in a live tidal wave of people was the norm in that area. I was loving it, although my focus was clearly more towards “surviving” this, more so than I was in the last spot I was in where I was just simply enjoying the music. When Metallica played their last song; “Seek & Destroy” (my all time favorite song of theirs – also my primary ringtone), several black balloon balls with “Metallica” and “Death Magnetic” written on it started falling from the ceiling. At first everyone were having fun just bumping the ball all over the crowd, until people started wanting to keep one for themselves. Me and my friend were able to grab hold of one of those balls, and immediately we were smothered by other guys who wanted that ball for themselves. My friend tried to deflate it so that we can hold on to it better, but then somebody else decided to speed up the process by making it pop with a key. As soon as that happened, everybody quickly grabbed on to it trying to claim it as their own. Me and my friend held on tight however and soon the majority of people accepted that it was in fact ours… except for this one guy. I believe it was just about one minute of time passing, but we had an epic battle of tug of war with this one other guy who was very vigilant in trying to take the balloon from us. I tried to make it much harder for the guy by wrapping a part of it around my right arm. The guy simply would not let go though, and my arm was getting really constricted by that balloon being wrapped around it (I got the bruises to show for it). It was me, my friend, and that one guy tugging on this deflated balloon, while everybody watched us in action. At one point my glasses started to fall off, and with that I had to let go. Luckily in the end my friend was able to force the balloon out of that guy’s hands. While the song was ending, and with the balloon that we fought for in hand, we decided to leave the arena so that we can get out of the parking lot faster.
Man, what a night that was. Just from that balloon fight alone I’ve got to say that this was one of the most memorable Metallica concert that I’ve been to. To think that I’m going to see them again two more times next week. My neck and throat are going to hate me in seven days.
