Metallica – Sonisphere UK 2011
Sonisphere 2011 review? Blimey, where do you start with something so awesome, intense, powerful all rolled in to one? I feel that rather than skipping over the entire festival, the best thing and fair thing would be to select the highlights of the entire weekend.
For me, what a pinaccle to the first day was with out a doubt, Metallica – call them what you will, whether it is ‘Thrash masters’, ‘sell outs’, ‘grand-dads of metal’ or ‘pioneers of the Metal scene’, whether your opinion of them is good or bad, you can not escape what they bring to the fore.
The legends before them with 3 of big four had already tore the crowd a new one by ripping throught the most insane of setlist, but it was now time for the ultimate. As a true fanboy, that had seen them 11 times live previously, I was expecting the song order to be something along the lines of – intro, blackened etc etc.. but to open with Hit the Lights, it was a true signal of intent to keep surprising fans and to finish that and go straight in to one of the most famous and well revered tracks of their amazing career, Master Of Puppets, was a true shock to the system.
Thankfully, this does put a number of theories to bed though – the first one, They are Metallica and they will do what they want. Secondly, they are not predictable 30 years in to their career and this is what keeps attracting more fans to the Metallica family. They just know what to do and they do it frighteningly well and this is one of the reasons they are destroying ALL competition 3 decades later.
They again continued to surprise the fans with a great choice of tracks, new and old which included the usual grand finale track ‘Seek and Destroy’ as the fourth song and they also played tracks which the crowd participation was cranked right up for example ‘Memory Remains’ and mortar driven pyro wonder, ‘One’
Dont think for one minute, this was a greatest hits set, there were a couple of cracking swerve balls thrown in for good measure including the riff laden, ‘Ride the Lightning’ and the grand yet powerful, ‘Call of Ktulu’
Most of the fans were aware that as the BIG 4 were in town, it would involve band members from Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer coming on stage during the encore and smashing one of the greatest cover tracks of all time, “Am I Evil” by Diamond Head. In a truly thankful manner, Metallica also called up Diamond Head stalwart, Brian Tatler to get the track underway. Such a lovely gesture to a man who singlehandedly inspired Metallica to start their band all those years ago.
But what was that, Metallica did a second encore? Hell yes, of course, they did – once they had wheeled their own equipment after the BIG 4 jam, they finished the set with the chugfest that is Battery and fan favourite, Creeping Death.
Tonight, we had witnessed Metallica history with a fantastic show and the BIG FIVE on stage at once for the first time in the UK, and fans will hold that show in the highest regard for a very long time.
please take a look at the gallery below for more high quality images! \m/
