Metallica

On Sunday, as an early birthday present from my parents, I went to a Metallica concert at Wembley Stadium. So two first for me, first time seeing the fantastic Metallica live, and the first time at the new Wembley Stadium.

The approach to the stadium from the underground station (Wembley Park) has been much improved, with better access to/from the station, the signs were clearly marked for the various entrances around Wembley, and I soon found myself making my way up to the third tier of Wembley to find my seat. Unfortunately this happened to be right at the back of the seating area I was in, had a short bout of dizziness when I first got there, but soon got over that.

The concert itself started at 16:30 with the first support act, Mastadon, I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to buy any of their cd’s, that’s about all I can say for that. Then at about 17:10 came the second support act, Machine Head they came out and played a 30 minute set, again, not really a group I like and again wont be rushing out to buy any of their stuff. Just before the end of their set I decided to make use of the facilities, which surprised me by being quite clean and reasonably plentiful, decided to use the time to grab a bite to eat as well, which wasn’t cheap, paid £7 for a small portion of fish and chips and £2.20 for a medium coke, after this I made my way back to my seat and at approx 18:00 we had the main support act, HIM, and I’ve got to say they were pretty good and played for a good 40 minutes or so. But lets face it, I wasn’t there for the support acts.

After HIM we had a loooong wait from 18:40 to about 19:30, during which time they changed the stage around. I used this time to have a wander round the stadium, and gave into temptation by buying a Metallica T-Shirt for £18. By about 19:20 fans were getting restless and some chants of Metallica started up with whistling and clapping and some Mexican waves, finally at about 19:30 the big screens came on, and they came on out to huge cheers and applause, the crowd were quite literally electrified, it was an awesome moment. They played for nearly two and half hours, with a good mix of classic and newer songs, from Master of Puppets to The Memory Remains.

One of the highlights of the night was when Rob played his bass like the bongos, treating us all to some monster bass. This was shortly followed by The Memory Remains, with the crowd asked to join in, at one point they dimmed the stage lights and just let the crowd sing away, James and Lars looked really moved by this, with some great gestures to the crowd. It was without a doubt a great night, and Metallica were quite simply magnificent live. I decided to leave just before 22:00, and by looking around the web, seems I only missed the one song, but as I didn’t fancy my chances of making my train home with 60 odd thousand other fans pouring into the local underground stations at the same time, I thought it best to leave a little early (I wasn’t the only one mind, the guy who had been sitting next to me left at about 21:00 and didn’t re-appear).

Seems that at the end Lars promised the new album and a new tour for 2008, so I guess I best get saving now for that.