Lineup: Metallica/Volbeat/Local H
Venue: Gillette Stadium, Foxboro, MA
Date: May 19th, 2017
Local H: Arrived late and missed their set.
Volbeat: By the time I got to my seats, Volbeat had just broke into "16 Dollars" from their 2010 breakout album Beyond Hell/Above Heaven. While I was initially a little bit disappointed that I didn't get into Gillette Stadium in time for the start of their set, this late arrival proved to be a blessing in disguise. The sound mix was so muddy that you couldn't make out anything aside from the guitar and a handful of vocal lines, which made it really difficult to get into/properly assess the quality of their set. Even though I'm pretty indifferent towards Volbeat's recent output, I'd like to see them again in an environment where I can clearly hear what they're playing.
Metallica: I've been fortunate enough to catch a vast majority of my favorite bands live and for the most part, these performances have resulted in some of the most treasured memories I've accumulated in my 25 years of life to-date. Thrash metal legends Metallica were pretty much the only band of my top-tier favorites that I hadn't gotten the chance to see yet, which isn't exactly surprising given the fact they've played Massachusetts a grand total of once (January 2009 on the Death Magnetic tour) since I started going to shows 12 years ago. Friday night, I finally caught my white whale and for the most part, it lived up to my immense expectations.
It became clear within the first few minutes of Metallica taking the stage that this wasn't going to be an ordinary metal show experience. They have a larger-than-life rockstar swagger that you very rarely see in a genre that's primarily driven by intimate shows and subdued personalities. Everything from their sprawling stage setup to frontman James Hetfield's exuberant stage presence is much more reminiscent of an arena rock band like Van Halen or Kiss than Black Sabbath or Iron Maiden. Metallica is the undisputed most popular metal band of all-time and it's great to see them embrace their long run of absurd success with a properly excessive live show.
While the flashy showmanship definitely plays a crucial role in their set, Metallica's live show isn't merely a empty, gimmicky spectacle. The quality of the musicianship is every bit good as the elaborate stage production. The older material has every ounce of ferocity that made the studio versions groundbreaking classics while the newer material retains all of the hard rock flash and sing-along hooks that allowed them to become the first metal band to ever resonate with mainstream audiences. Metallica has aged with a tremendous level of grace and it helped make this performance a treat for fans of any era of their music.
As impressive as Metallica was, the overwhelming shitiness of Gillette Stadium prevented it from being an all-time great performance. Football stadiums clearly aren't built for acoustics, but the sound quality at Gillette managed to fall far below my very low expectations. The wind tunnel-esque design of the stadium made it sound like they were playing in the next city over and led to every single instrument/mic cutting out at various points of the set. As an obsessive metalhead who's been waiting 12 agonizing years to see Metallica live, nothing quite crushes your soul like having the solo of "Master of Puppets" and pretty much the entirety of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" get ruined by shoddy-ass sound. How people gleefully shell out $100+ to go see Kenny Chesney, Luke Bryan and the half-dozen other pop-country jabronis that play at this coffin every summer is legitimately astonishing to me.
Despite my issues with the venue and some of the setlist choices (playing five tracks from The Black Album while only playing a combined two songs from Master of Puppets and ...And Justice for All is blasphemous), it was still awesome to finally cross Metallica off my bucket list and experience some of my all-time favorite songs ("Fight Fire with Fire", "One", "Fade to Black") in a live setting. Hopefully the next time Metallica rolls through Massachusetts, they won't book a show at Robert Kraft's poop palace.
Scores:
Volbeat 6.5/10
Metallica 8.5/10
Setlists:
Volbeat (last 6 songs):
16 Dollars
The Hangman's Body Count
Hallelujah Goat
Lola Montez
Dead but Rising
Still Counting
Metallica:
Hardwired
Atlas, Rise!
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Fuel
The Unforgiven
Now That We're Dead
Moth Into Flame
Wherever I May Roam
Halo on Fire
Motorbreath
Sad but True
One
Master of Puppets
Fade to Black
Seek & Destroy
Encore:
Fight Fire with Fire
Nothing Else Matters
Enter Sandman
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