You make Metallica feel great! Thank you, friends! Youve come here to release some energy tonight. You are the fifth member of Metallica!
James Hetfield
Platitudes have not typically been among the strengths of this preternaturally wise band, which formed almost 30 years ago and quickly became one of the most proficient and influential outfits in American heavy metal. And this was not Mr. Hetfields only bland affirmation. But somehow with his gravelly rasp and all-black ensemble Mr. Hetfield remains one of the few people in the world who can make skintight black jeans look tough he can say these things to a several-thousand-strong crowd consisting largely of loudly bellowing bruisers, and still inspire fear and awe.
Thats because even after a decade and a half of creative muddle, the Metallica mystique trumps all. Here, for more than two hours, the musicians and their fans gladly imagined the band as it once was punishing, technically astonishing, relentless.
It was a vision Metallica Mr. Hetfield, the guitarist Kirk Hammett, the bassist Robert Trujillo and the drummer Lars Ulrich often lived up to, playing no songs released after 1991, apart from those from the inconsistent Death Magnetic (Warner Brothers), its ninth studio album, which came out last year.
That record is closer in spirit to the bands seminal work than anything it has produced in years, a point Mr. Hetfield made sure the crowd understood.
What really complements the new stuff is the old stuff, he assured, as if trying to sneak someone into an exclusive club who was not on the guest list. The new stuff, though, rarely made it past the velvet rope. Apart from That Was Just Your Life and All Nightmare Long, it was overlong and flabby, bogged down with clunky lyrics, helped only slightly by dashes of flamboyant ingenuity on the parts of Mr. Hammett and Mr. Ulrich.
Flaws notwithstanding, this show was a convincing argument for the continued relevance of the king-size rock extravaganza. The band worked a large, rectangular platform on the arena floor, with fans clamoring at barriers on all four sides, giving the performance the aura of a cage match. Each band member was stalked by his own spotlight, suggesting four people putting on four separate concerts, working the breadth of the stage with the purpose of a Broadway musical, if not the regimentation.
