25.08.2019 Metallica

Maimarktgelände at Mannheim (Germany)

The sun was slowly going down and it was getting darker in front of the stage. Originally Metallica should start at 20:30 but they took their time until it was dark enough to best bring off the huge LED wall. At 20:40 the redeeming sounds of Ennio Morricones “The Ecstacy Of Gold” could be heard accompanied by the associated pictures of the film until it went over into the intro of “Hardwired”.
The title song of the current album was forming directly the opener to which James Hatfield, Kirk Hammet, Robert Trujillo and Lars Ulrich entered the stage. The guys left no doubt that despite the long tour across Europe they still had enough energy left over for this ending and display really grand fireworks from musical and optical point of view to the audience. Meanwhile, all 60,000 visitors were on the sold-out May market area and a more than 2.5-hour lasting ride on the rollercoaster was lying in front of them all. In the beginning a storm was blowing from the stage formed by classics like “The Four Horseman” or “The God That Failed” from the 1991 released album “Metallica” (also called “The Black Album”) before it got some calmer during “The Unforgiven” from the same long player.
All, except the drummer Ulrich were fully using the gigantic stage. Again and again the guys were changing places and getting in very close contact with the crowd. That followed loudly without stopping so that encouraging them by the band members was not needed at all. The atmosphere was heated up even more by all the great light, fire and fog effects in combination with the video and camera recordings shown on the screen. A very special highlight were two songs in the middle part of the show which were not played at all during the tour. On the one hand it was “The Outlaw Torn” of the 1996 released album “Load” as well as the perfectly thrashed “St. Anger” of the equally named album released in 2003.
What was following afterwards was the honest struggle of Robert Trujillo together with Kirk Hammet to present the usual local song. In very clumsy German they wrestled with Rio Reiser’s song “König Von Deutschland” which seemed to be great fun to them and also the audience was animated by that to sing along loudly but overall it was the part to forget about. If only there would not have been this small tribute of Trujillo to his predecessor, the unforgotten Cliff Burton. With the bass sequence from “Orion” he bowed before him right afterwards. On this one climax, directly the next one was following when the guys from Metallica deployed all their skills during “One”. Very nice was the part right before the encore where Lars Ulrich sat down at a second drum kit right at the head of the stage and there all were opening the throttle once more. During encore it was getting contemplative one more time with “Nothing Else Matters” before the culmination with “Enter Sandman” from the “Black Album” and the belonging fireworks after which unfortunately the lights went down and Metallica dedicated a several minutes taking video as a big thankyou to all the people that were involved into their tour.
After my first attempt to see them live at Cologne unfortunately failed I grabbed the chance on short notice to see these icons of thrash metal once live. And I did not regret one single second. These wildly energy radiating from the stage combined with an incredibly charismatic James Hatfield, great musicians and a terrific best-of set-list that was of course dominated by the current album “Hardwired…To Self Destruct” and the incredible “Black Album”. Everything was aligned so coherent: Songs, video sequences, special effects and a superior sound quality that I have not heard on many open-air concerts. Although the tickets are extremely expensive, so they were worth every single Euro. And so much fun like the guys had during their gig I am very convinced that it was not their last appearance at Germany! Only the departure was very time consuming so that I finally left the parking space after approximately 2.5 hours. That is something the operators of the May market area should significantly improve as the whole crowd had to worm their way through just some small openings at the entrance area leading to very long waiting time (and is in my point of view also a security risk). That was continued whilst leaving the parking space. The first 45 minutes nothing moved on and afterwards I needed still more than one hour to reach the just very few 100m distant through road.

Setlist:

The Ecstacy Of Gold (Ennio Morricone Song)
Hardwired Intro
Hardwired
The Memory Remains (with extended Outro)
The Four Horseman
The God That Failed
The Unforgiven
Confusion
Moth Into Flame
Sad But True
The Outlaw Torn
St. Anger
Kirk Hammet and Robert Trujillo Solos incl. König Von Deutschland, ManUNkind und Orion
One
Master Of Puppets
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Creeping Death
Seek & Destroy