December 11, 2009
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Yesterday at the Anaheim Honda Center, I got to see Metallica in concert once again; as I always make it a point to see them every time they are in town. The night started off with one memorable moment when we were still in traffic just outside the Honda Center. We were waiting to move on the streets to get into the venue parking, when some jackass in a white SUV was trying to do an illegal U-Turn in front of us. My friend was driving and sped up to stop him, forcing him to move forward with the traffic. That jackass started giving us dirty looks, which prompted my other friends in the back seat to start heckling him. At that point I was thinking “okay, gotta prepare to get into a fight when we get out of the car.” Luckily it didn’t come to that, and we didn’t see him or his vehicle after we parked.
The lines to get in was really long at the side of the Honda Center where we walked by. I needed to get tickets at Will Call though, and there were no lines for that. The entrance to get in the Honda Center right next to the Will Call window ALSO had no line. This was pretty sweet, as it wasn’t a hassle at all to get in. Checked out the merchandise booth, but the clothes were unfortunately much too expensive for my taste, so we proceeded to find our seats. We may not have tickets to the floor, but our view from our seats wasn’t bad at all. BTW, I did not bring my trusty camera, so no zoomed in photos or videos this time around, as I had to rely on my BlackBerry Storm.
We did miss the opening band (still don’t know who it was), but we were there for all of Machinehead‘s set list. The band was baddass and at one point played Pantera‘s “Fucking Hostile” as a nice tribute to guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell, who died five years ago this week. There was also one cool moment when the drummer threw a drum stick to somebody in the audience during a particular pause in his drumming, but that somebody immediately threw it right back, the drummer catches it, and immediately starts playing drums again. Staged? Dunno, but really cool to see. During their performance however, me and my friend could tell that the audio level wasn’t tweaked well enough for those of us in the upper deck of the Honda Center, as there was too much bass drowning out the guitars and vocals. The sound check before Metallica’s set helped a little bit, but I’m afraid it still wasn’t tweaked enough to my liking.
Metallica actually got on stage pretty late, During the 45 minutes after Machinehead ended their set a little before 9PM, and Metallica got their set going, the audience was getting a little jumpy. Any small hint that the show was going to start, the audience would start getting all excited, but then a few seconds later would settle down from the false alarm. This happens several times, which is unnecessary since it’s obvious that the house lights need to turn off first before the band gets out there. Since Metallica did start late, the gaps between the first encore and the second encore was significantly reduced. No stalling seems to be the goal, and they ended their set just about exactly at 12 midnight.
Speaking of which, it needs to be said that this is after all a continuation to their “World Magnetic Tour” that kicked off last year, so the content of the show itself isn’t too different at all to when I saw them last year for this tour (Dec 12, 17, 18, 2008). The stage is still set “in the round.” They still have those giant coffins floating over the stage. Laser lights extravaganza during the first song. Pyrotechnics. Those Metallica beach balls that they drop on the audience during the final song. James Hetfield once again does most of the talking with the audience, with Lars Ulrich joking around once in a while (he wore a Disneyland Mickey Ears hat at one point).
A constant thing during this tour is that Metallica continues to play tons of the old stuff, and in my show they did Trapped Under Ice, Shortest Straw, Fade To Black, etc…. Kirk Hammett still does his two guitar solos sometime during the setlist. Before the final encore songs, they still jam out to part of a Metallica song to tease the audience. There are still parts on their set list that are interchangeable every show, and they at least do one cover song (Motorhead’s “Too Late Too Late” this time around). The regular songs they’ll play every night are That Was Just Your Life, The End Of The Line, Broken Beat & Scarred, Sad But True, One, The Day That Never Comes, Master Of Puppets, Nothing Else Matters, Enter Sandman, with Seek & Destroy always being the final song.
So it was a pretty standard Metallica concert, and there weren’t any surprises really. However this IS Metallica I’m talking about here, so the fact that they are just doing what they do best is more than enough for me. By the end of the night, I had a sore neck, tired body, and my voice was practically gone. I haven’t headbanged, thrashed around, sung that loud (screamed) in a concert in awhile, and I was feeling the after effects. Wow was it great though. Metallica, you rule!
* click here for the photos I did take with my phone *
* purchase the audio from the concert at http://livemetallica.com *
