At the live concert 3/28/04 and afterthoughts — Part 2

[Part 1 is available here]

Our seats were right on the 200 level overlooking and down upon the stage. Good seats, though I realized how lousy my camera phone takes pictures during concert lighting. Very blurry and sometimes a white splotch. The pictures sucked.

Godsmack opened for Metallica and I could barely understand anything they played because it was so loud. They did a very cool dual drummer solo bit where they mixed a collage of Rush (Tom Johnson would have liked this, I bet) with Zeppelin and Aerosmith. They were too loud, though, and I know the saying: if it's too loud, you are too old. Ok, but even with protective earplugs I couldn't understand them. There is a point where being intelligible vs. being loud becomes an issue and Godsmack's performance proved that for me.

After Godsmack we decided to go get the obligatory concert shirt. We waited in line for some 45 minutes and got to witness some punk steal a shirt and run off, seemingly unscathed. Then we returned to our seats and Metallica was just taking the stage. They were setup in Key Arena so that Lars Ulrich's drums were moved around the stage as the concert went along and that they would be facing from each angle. The TV set monitors hanging far above them were in black and white (huh? no color???) and had annoying lines and other problems through most of the concert. Since I didn't go to the concert to watch them on TV it wasn't that big of a deal but it was a bit discouraging.

Here is the full set list of songs that Metallica actually played:

Blackened
Fuel
Ride The Lightning
Kirk solo #1
Fade To Black
Frantic
Holier Than Thou
I Disappear
St. Anger
Sad But True
Creeping Death
Battery
No Leaf Clover
Kirk solo #2
Nothing Else Matters
Master Of Puppets
One
Enter Sandman
Four Horseman
Dyers Eve

I noticed that the crowd was very into songs played from Ride The Lightning era (Creeping Death, Fade To Black and Ride The Lightning) and seemed to actually calm down and be somewhat disinterested in Frantic from their new St. Anger CD and also the song Dyers Eve, which I thought was unusual because Dyers Eve is a good thrash metal song and one that Metallica has only started playing on this tour. Blackened and Fuel sounded just like the Los Angeles concert with little to no improvisation. Same with both of Kirk's solos. Holier Than Thou was a nice special addition to the set list that the crowd got into as well as No Leaf Clover. One had probably one of the coolest special pyro effects that I've ever seen in concert for a single song: with firecrackers and fire blowing out of the stage during the familiar gunfire opening, the sounds of soldiers fighting in the background it was just downright eerie and poignant considering the whole Iraq situation. They closed the concert with Enter Sandman before the first encore of Four Horseman and second encore of Dyers Eve. I will give it to Metallica on the hanging around after the songs and distributing a ton of guitar picks and drumsticks. Lars spit and threw water on the crowd which as a teen I might have thought was cool but as an adult I thought was lame and uncool. Boy, how things change over twenty years!

Overall I'd give the concert a B grade. It wasn't as good as the first time I saw them and didn't really even know who they were but they certainly weren't bad by any stretch of the imagination. If I were grading on value for the money I'd give the concert a C-, because it was too expensive for $200 USD (yes, two hundred dollars, after you consider parking, two tickets, gas, t-shirt, CD) and the opening act Godsmack, again was way too loud. I know that makes me sound like a wimpy, lame old rocker, but if it's too loud to hear, how can one enjoy it? I never thought I'd admit that a heavy metal act playing too loud could ever be bad, but I do now. With that said, we still bought Godsmack's Faceless CD for $10 at the same time we got the tour shirt and have since listened to a few songs and enjoyed some of their music.

I'll keep saying this though, I never would have thought Godsmack would play louder than Metallica and that I actually would enjoy the fact that Metallica played at a more intelligible and tolerable level.  Old age, here I am.

Does anybody else think metal should be so loud that it is unintelligible? The louder the better ... really?

This two-part article on Metallica originally appeared at Things that ... make you go hmm