The Big Four: Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax - broadcast via satellite to select movie theaters Tuesday, June 22.
For one night only, metalheads around the world can experience history: On Tuesday, June 22, the "Big Four" perform on one stage together, and through the wonders of satellite technology, you can be part of this historic concert event, broadcast exclusively to select movie theaters around the world. Beyond the limited European festival dates, there are no additional tour dates planned for this extraordinary line-up.
Metallica with Machine Head and Volbeat Las Vegas @ Mandalay Bay Events Center Dec 5th, 2009
Metallica continues to tour supporting their latest CD, Death Magnetic, and this is the 2nd time I've seen them on the tour. They've kept pretty much the same stage and all and a lot of the same lights, pyros, giant black beach balls... etc. What changes is the opening bands and the set list, so really you can go right here for a more detailed recap of the show if you want from when I saw them last year.
We timed it pretty good as we completely missed Volbeat, who I really didn't care much about, and got to our seats only about a song into Machine Head's set. This was the first time I've ever seen them and I thought they were excellent. I'm not sure in-the-round in a huge venue like this is the best place to see them, but I'll take what I can get. I screamed along to Davidian, Now I Lay Thee Down and Halo along with the rest of the crowd who was arriving and were really into them. I've got to catch these guy headlining soon.
The show was sold-out and by the time metal legends took the stage the place was packed and about to go off it felt like. When the lights went down and the music for Ecstacy of Gold hit to a huge laser show, the place did just that.
Still heavy on the new CD, they tore through 18 songs in the 2 1/2 hours with the energy of a much younger band. They played songs from 7 different albums: Kill ‘Em All (2 songs), Ride the Lightning (3 songs), Master of Puppets (1 song), ...And Justice for All (1 song), The Black Album (3 songs), ReLoad (1 song), Garage, Inc. (1 song), and Death Magnetic (6 songs). Since I'd already seen them on this tour and have heard them play the new songs, I was hoping they'd drop a couple and replace them with classics (how about For Whom The Bell Tolls or Battery) but since I love about 50 of their songs I could have the same complaints at every one of their shows (unless they play for about 10 hours). Set list highlights for me were Fade To Black and the massive pyro during the song One.
And I am not one of those guys who sits around and whines and moans about a band getting too old and for them to hang it up and blah blah blah. Look, if they love their music and can still get it done, bands like The Stones and Metallica and KISS should play until they're sitting in an old folks home. More power to them I say. And trust me on this, Metallica can absolutely still get it done.
Here's the full set list in order:
* That Was Just Your Life * The End of the Line * Ride The Lightning * The Memory Remains * Fade to Black * Broken, Beat & Scarred * Cyanide * Sad But True * One * All Nightmare Long * The Day That Never Comes * Master Of Puppets * Fight Fire With Fire * Nothing Else Matters * Enter Sandman
** Encore **
* Die Die My Darling * Whiplash * Seek and Destroy
I've said it before and I'll say it again... Pearls Before Swine is the best comic strip going. Another classic today (Metallica!) I thought I just had to share (click on for full size):
I must reiterate here... I love Metallica. They're one of my favorite all-time bands. But now that I've heard their new collaboration with Lou Reed, LuLu, all the way through a few times I'm just blown away by how much wang this thing smokes. It's terrible. Almost laughably terrible. I am however having a lot of fun reading all the reviews on the interwebs. Lots of fun!
MetaCritic has it at a 37/100 from critics right now, which if you don't know is simply dreadful. Here's some of my favorite quotes, and keep in mind these are your usual Internet trolls and chuckleheads, these are critics from places like A.V. Club and Chicago Tribune. Check 'em out:
* The whole thing comes off as either an expensive major label joke or nigh-impenetrable high art concept. Maybe both.
* Lulu is essentially a piece of shock art that's littered with vulgarity both lyrical and musical.
* Any message contained within Lulu is lost in the whirl of discordant guitar work, Reed's mutterings and the complete sense of abject disappointment that surrounds the entire album.
* An utter wreck that curiously, miraculously, might have been great.
* LuLu is a work that invites derision, an album that wallows in a tarpit of ugliness.
* The bulk of Lulu sounds like your dad's drunk friend reciting his self-penned erotica over a melting ReLoad cassette.
* It turns out that "Brandenburg Gate" is one of the only songs with an actual melody.The rest of Lulu is full of recycled, repetitive riffs; endless drones; more sex and violence than a slasher movie.
* Lulu is a joyless mess, a grim, humorless record with no notion of when to say "when."
* The godfather of avant-rock and the popular metal band don't click on any level.
* Audacious to the extreme, but exhaustingly tedious as a result, its few interesting ideas are stretched out beyond the point of utility and pounded into submission.
* At no point does Lou Reed sound like he is singing with Metallica, and the same is true the other way around.
* Not only is Lulu the worst thing any of the players have been involved in, it's quite possibly a candidate for one of the worst albums ever made.
Ha ha now that's fun! The user scores aren't any better, giving it an average of 1.8 at this point (out of 10 believe it or not). It's getting pounded. Here's some favorites:
* Lou Reed's nasally delivery just doesn't fit, it comes off as some uninspired old fart recording his voice in the living room while a metal riff plays in the background.
* I am all for trying new things and pushing the boundaries but sometimes you have to know when to pull back and review your art objectively.....this i'm afraid is just an exercise in self indulge
* This is just an embarrassment made by two creatively bankrupt artists. Please stop your Metallica hero worship and hear this album for what it is: Crap.
* I understand wanting to do something different musically. But the band also needs to understand that sometimes doing something different means that it can still suck. And suck this album does.
Fun stuff!
Please Metallica... I'm begging you... get into the studio as soon as possible and make a new CD so we can put this whole ugly mess behind us. Stop saying we "don't get it" and quite trying to justify it as being "outside the box". I do get it and I've been outside the box before... and it still sucks monkey crotch. Simply terrible. You missed, it happens.
The Memory Remains live from Quebec City, Canada on July 16th. Excellent crowd and Metallica sounds fantastic. I'd love to have been at this show. Setlist follows the video:
Setlist
1. Creeping Death 2. For Whom the Bell Tolls 3. Fuel 4. Ride the Lightning 5. Fade to Black 6. Cyanide 7. The Memory Remains 8. Welcome Home (Sanitarium) 9. Sad But True 10. All Nightmare Long 11. One 12. Master of Puppets 13. Blackened 14. Nothing Else Matters 15. Enter Sandman
Encore 16. Am I Evil? 17. Hit the Lights 18. Seek & Destroy
More live Metallica from the tour, this time doing "Welcome Home (Sanitarium) " live in Halifax, Canada on July 14th.
This song, from the album Master of Puppets, is one of my top 5 Metallica favorites. James Hetfield himself said he actually wrote this as tribute to the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a classic film. It was Metallica's last single to feature bassist Cliff Burton before his death in 1986.
How about Metallica blasting "The Call Of Ktulu" from Amneville, France on July 11, 2011? Oui, I believe I will sir. Merci.
From the CD Ride The Lightning, the idea of the song is based upon H. P. Lovecraft's book The Shadow Over Innsmouth which was first introduced to the rest of the band by Cliff Burton. The song's name was taken from one of H.P. Lovecraft's main stories featuring Cthulhu, The Call of Cthulhu, which was written in 1928 for the magazine Weird Tales. It's also the last song to include songwriting credit for Dave Mustaine.
Metallica just posted this sweet pro-shot video of them playing "Blackened" live in Milan, Italy. Since it doesn't look like they'll be playing anywhere near me this tour, preventing me from seeing them for my 5th time since 2000, I guess these videos from the tour will have to suffice.
Metallica played an impromptu gig last Thursday night (November 4) in Hangar 8 at Santa Monica Airport, California at a party to promote the release of the new video game "Call Of Duty: Black Ops" and here's them performing the classic "Harvester Of Sorrow" from the show.
Here's the full setlist from the gig:
01. Creeping Death 02. For Whom The Bell Tolls 03. Fuel 04. Harvester Of Sorrow 05. Fade To Black 06. Cyanide 07. Sad But True 08. One 09. Master Of Puppets 10. Battery 11. Stone Cold Crazy 12. Enter Sandman
This was Metallica's only U.S. gig for the rest of the year.
So here's the trailer for The Big 4 concert DVD, Live from Sofia, Bulgaria on June 22nd 2010. It features thrash gods Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax and hit stores today (November 2nd). Personally I picked up the Blu-ray version myself from Best Buy at lunchtime ($24.99) and can't wait to dive into this whole thing. All 4 concerts are shown in their entirety plus a 45 minute documentary. This was shown in theaters 1 night this Summer but I didn't get to catch it, so I'll just bring it home.
This very well could be the greatest thing in the history of things.
Here's Metallica's video for "All Nightmare Long" and it's perfect for Halloween. The band doesn't appear in it, but some funky spores reanimate dead tissue and we have all sorts of zombie fun as a result. Yes, there are zombie cats.
Here's what James Hetfield said about the song's lyrical meaning: “It was an attempt to get back to the H.P. Lovecraft mythos with Thing that Should Not Be, Call of Kthulu. This was about the hounds of Tindalos, which was another crazy mindf**k about these wolves that hunt through their nightmares and the only way you can get away from them is stay with angels. You can't even escape through sleep."
A Hound of Tindalos is a fictional creature created by Frank Belknap Long for the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. They first appeared in Long's short story "The Hounds of Tindalos" (1931). Lovecraft mentions the creatures in his short story "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1931).
"They are lean and athirst!" he shrieked... "All the evil in the universe was concentrated in their lean, hungry bodies. Or had they bodies? I saw them only for a moment, I cannot be certain." ~ Frank Belknap Long, "The Hounds of Tindalos"
Well, now this is... interesting. You know how I love my Metallica, but am not a big church goer. And by not a big church goer I mean I avoid it and all the dogma associated with it like the plague. But this wacky cat has put it all together, just like chocolate and peanut butter.
According to "The Day Metallica Came To Church" author and pastor John Van Sloten, he shows how God can speak to us through anything and everything — heavy metal music, R-rated films, sports, and even the latest fashions. This book might just change the way you hear God's voice — and how you live in today's world.
A sample of the "The Day Metallica Came To Church" book in PDF format can be found at this location. I haven't actually read it yet, but plan to later to see what's going on with this.
Be careful though, that sneaky Metallica may just be sending subliminal messages about shunning homosexuals.
