You can’t kill the metal
The metal will live on
Punk Rock tried to kill the metal
But they failed, as they were smite to the ground
New Wave tried to kill the metal
But they failed, as they were stricken down to the ground
Grunge tried to kill the metal. Hahahahahaha!
They failed, as they were thrown to the ground
Aargh! yeah!
— Tenacious D, “The Metal”
That was never truer than last night, when Metallica rocked Seattle’s Key Arena.
Having perhaps staged the musical comeback of the year with their album Death Magnetic, the band proved that their potent blend of snarling lyrics, erupting guitar solos and jackhammer double-bass drumming carried over equally well to the live stage.
The interaction with the crowd was remarkable, starting with the unique stage planted smack in the center of the arena that put the band at the center of a huge 360 bowl lined with 17,000 fans. Lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and new bassist Robert Trujillo prowled the stage, stopping to give fans in different sections a good view. James Hetfield strode about to any of eight microphones, and Lars Ulrich’s monster drum set rotated 90 degrees every few songs.
The thing I noticed most about the crowd was how diverse it was.
When I was a kid in middle school, the metalheads were the weird kids who dressed in black leather jackets featuring some freak named “Ozzy Osbourne” and hung out in the corner of the playground.
Although within a few years I was heavily into bands like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, I always kept my distance from the metal scene of the 1980s. It was too dark, too weird.
Yet last night there was a grandma with white hair a few seats down from us. There were several avuncular characters with white hair roaming the aisles. A woman in front of us brought a daughter who was 12, tops, and who sat on her lap during parts of the show.
At one point in the show, Hetfield talked to a kid in the first row who turned out to be 8 years old. “You have really cool parents,” Hetfield laughed. This morning on KISW, a 35-year-old woman called in and said she took her two kids, aged 16 and 14.
Metal used to be this scary subculture that had all the parents freaked out over devil worship and stuff like that.
Today, it’s just a night out for the whole family.
I generally like this trend. Were Harlan a few years older, I would have taken him. In the end, it’s all about the music, and more people appreciating the music is a good thing.
I suspect a large part of it also is the popularity of games like Guitar Hero, which have managed to instill a Spinal Tap-esque ironic detachment from some of the juvenile and pretentiously moody aspects of the genre while maintaining a great respect for the intricacy and power of the music.
But while I’m glad that band like Metallica aren’t demonized by ignorant social conservatives anymore, I wonder if something hasn’t been lost. Being a Metallica fan 20 years ago (which I wasn’t) carried a certain badge of defiance. Metal was something that shocked and outraged parents and authority figures, and thereby knit the fanbase into something that was almost familial.
I suppose some sub-genres of metal still possess the power to shock repel — I certainly don’t care one whit for the “Cookie Monster”-style of guttural signing that is popular among many leading metal bands today, and the extreme death metal I’ve read about in some parts of northern Europe strike me as pretty sick.
Ultimately, though, I’m pretty happy that more people are able to appreciate metal, and the Metallica concert was an unexpected example of a lot of different people coming together to get their faces melted off.
A couple quick observations on the show. The band played for more than two hours and tore through 18 songs. Do the math and you’ll find that’s not a lot of songs for that length of time. In fact, each song took an average of 7-1/2 minutes, which is probably pretty close to what their average studio track runs. Metallica is famed for its epic songs with their multiple tempo changes and many richly textured layers.
Here’s the setlist:
- That Was Just Your Life, Death Magnetic
- The End Of The Line, Death Magnetic
- Creeping Death, Ride the Lightning
- Harvester of Sorrow, And Justice For All
- One, And Justice For All
- Broken, Beat and Scarred, Death Magnetic
- Cyanide, Death Magnetic
- Sad But True, Metallica
- Wherever I May Roam, Metallica
- Welcome Home (Sanitarium), Master of Puppets
- The Day That Never Comes, Death Magnetic
- Master of Puppets, Master of Puppets
- Blackened, And Justice For All
- Nothing Else Matters, Metallica
- Enter Sandman, Metallica
- Die Die My Darling, (cover)
- Motorbreath, Kill ‘Em All
- Seek and Destroy, Kill ‘Em All
While I would have loved to see a couple more of my favorites — “Frayed Ends of Sanity” and “Ride the Lightning” come to mind — it’s pretty hard to argue with that set list. “One”, “Master of Puppets” and “Enter Sandman” were definite highlights, though the place was charged with high-voltage energy throughout the whole thing.
The light show was impressive, kicking off with a dazzling laser display that lit up the stage and rafters. There were these giant metal coffins, probably 30′ long, suspended from the ceiling. That was cool enough, but the awesomeness level was cranked to 11 when I realized the coffins were shooting out laser beams.
There was some pyrotechnic prowess on display as well: hot orange flames bellowed out of the stage during several songs, and during “One”, these wicked jets of flame shot up as from giant bunsen burners. Oh, and they changed color, too: blue, green red, etc.
I was pretty pleased to hear now fewer than five tracks off the new album, which is metal album of the year as far as I’m concerned. There’s a pretty interesting back story to this CD.
Turn the dial back to 1991 for a minute. That’s the year Metallica’s hit “Enter Sandman” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” both stormed on to the charts.
It was a turning point for rock music.
The former track marked the high point of popularity for a band that had dominated the metal scene for much of the previous decade with epic albums shot through with equal measure of dark lyrics and face-melting musicianship.
The latter song defined the young decade of the 1990s and launched a million garage bands who hoped that a surplus of angst and flannel would make up for their meager repertoire of guitar chords.
Within one year, Kurt Cobain’s catchy hooks and stripped-down act seemed to make the brooding extravagance of Metallica and other metal bands irrelevant.
The rest of the decade saw Metallica struggle to define itself and its direction. Although St. Anger was released in 2003, the album shared more in common with its 90s predecessors Load and Reload. The musical malaise of the 90s had carried over into the new millennium.
Fast forward to 2008. Death Magnetic hits shelves in September and the cosmos were set right again.
Under the mystic direction of producer/career resurrection druid Rick Rubin, the band crafted 10 songs that harken back to their glory days, when fans threw the horns to epic tracks like “And Justic For All”, “Master of Puppets” and “Blackened”.
This is also one of those rare cases of an album not having any bad songs. None. Even “Unforgiven III”, dismissed by many critics as “unnecessary”, would more than hold its own as a standout hit track on a lesser album.
There are, of course, genuine standouts, starting with the opening trio of songs — “That Was Just Your Life”, “The End of the Line” and “Broken, Beat and Scarred” — that form an intro that must surely rank as one of the best ever.
Other tracks of note include “The Day That Never Comes”, “All Nightmare Long”, “Cyanide” and “Judas Kiss”.
It’s clear that Rubin succeeded in drawing out the best in each band member. Hetfield’s urgent snarl is in full force, Hemmett’s intricate noodling proves he’s still one of the finest lead guitarists out there, Lars Ulrich’s dual bass drums are like twin howitzers blasting away at your eardrums, and Robert Trujillo proves his mettle by serving up meaty basslines that bind the songs like steel bands.
One of my favorite one-sentence summaries of the album was given by a DJ on Seattle’s KISW radio station: “It’s an album that punches you in the face repeatedly, and I mean that in a good way.”
This is an amazing album that instantly revives old-school Metallica and proves Tenacious D’s memorable adage: You can’t kill the metal!
