Monday 29 April 2013

The night Metallica rocked my soul

(Pic courtesy of my very talented friend, Jean Pierre Morne Allers)

I'm writing this on Sunday, the day after the Johannesburg Metallica concert. My muscles hurt, my ears are ringing, and I'm so hoarse I sound like I should be working on one of those phone-sex lines.

This was one of the highlights of my life - I've always wanted to see Metallica live, but couldn't afford the tickets back in '08. Antisocial Husband, Evil Pickle and her boyfriend Metalsaur and I went. It was awesome.

Two negatives:

Why 2 opening acts? The first one's timing was off, and the second one was...a little meh, I'm not going to lie.

Secondly, after Pestroy (2nd act) was done, it literally took over an hour for Metallica to take the stage. I think I saw some people leave out of sheer annoyance...

Then Metallica came on. The crowd went NUTS. We were no longer individual people, just one seething organism pulsing to the beat of Metallica's awesomeness. There was bouncing.  There was headbanging. Thousands of fists in the air brandishing the horns. The sound was beyond incredible. The pyrotechnics were nearly a show by themselves!

"One" live literally moved me to tears. The studio version is powerful, but live, it becomes visceral and emotional and real. James roared and screamed and pleaded and fought and it was insane. The whole set list was pretty awesome, and just the experience of getting to sing along with one of my favourite bands live blew my tiny mind.

Kirk showed off his superior guitar skills many times, putting many of the air-guitarists around me to shame. Lars beat the crap out of his drums, but one could tell he doesn't have the same stamina as he used to have.
I didn't really like Robert when he first joined Metallica, but I really warmed to him with his performance last night. He had a solo that just hammered home how sexy a bass guitar is.

In summation: Metallica was so awesome, that they made me grow balls, then rocked them off.

\m/




PS Foo Fighters? Please do some gigs here. I could just dissolve into a puddle of happy mush if you did... < 3






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