The Sword: Its always tought for the first act of the night to come on in an Arena gig. While there were a couple of hundred people in the arena come 7pm when The Sword took to the stage, bear in mind that’s a couple hundred people in a 20,000 seat arena! Despite this they ploughed on with a good sound, but un-intelligible vocals. Plus I swear they had been taken straight from the 70’s! The lead guitarist/singer had some lovely flared jeans on! It may be because im not a fan but the music was good, it just sounded like one 45min song! It’s a shame the sound for the vocals was so poor I could hardly tell what he was singing about! Having said all that those that were in attendance responded well and those 45mins did seem to pass pretty darn quick!
Machine Head: Machine Head were a big reason I bought tickets for this gig, I did also want to see Metallica but I do love Machine Head. Id say the arena was probably 60% full, with a packed out standing floor for Machine Head. Highlights of the set were Imperium and Davidian for me! Two songs, which showcase the heavy and the fast that MH, do so well! Each song has crunching guitars and a constant beating from the Drums. That’s pretty much how I like my Metal! Rob Flyn is a great front man and took every opportunity to profess his love for the crowd and city, and that love was and is returned right back at Machine Head. Ive seen them three times now and every time am blown away by their live performance. The only slight downsides for me, again, concerned the vocals, they wernt very clear for me! Plus as a support band, it kind of limits what you can do in terms of length/composition of the set list and what you can do with the lights! Even so a great performance from the MH boys! A perfect warm up for Metallica!
Metallica: So onto the main act of the night, a full to bursting arena exploded when Kirk Hammet took to the stage, shortly followed by Rob Trujillo, Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield. What followed was a masterly 2 and a bit hours of metal perfection. This was my first time seeing Metallica, I knew they would be good, but crikey they were awesome! The music sounded perfect, James vocals sounded perfect and the light show was awesome! The first couple of songs saw a mad lazer show lighting up the centre stage. For the rest of the set the massive lighting rig moved up/down/sideways and created some perfect lights! Coupled with copious use of flames all over the stage whipped the crowd into a frenzy! All the usual hits were played including: Master/The Unforgiven 2/Enter Sandman and many others! Plus some great songs off Death Magnetic: Cyanide/That Was Just Your Life and a future Metallica classic (in my eyes) The Day That Never Comes. It was truly an amazing site when the house lights were put up and you could then see 20,000 screaming fans!
So an amazing show, Metallica are fantastic and im now glad to say ive seen them Live. Defiantly worth the entry fee! I only hope that my naff phone pictures give a small glimpse as to what it was like Thursday night!As always rock on people!
p.s. I have a review of the Phoenix v Vipers game also played on the 26th February prepared. This will be posted tomorrow (Monday), along with the usual game review of the Phoenix v Coventry game from Saturday, which will be posted on Tuesday.
