Concert review
There is no band on the planet better at obliterating NFL stadiums than Metallica — even if it was sometimes hard to tell last night.
The Bay Area metal gods arrived in Seattle for the first of two highly anticipated shows on Friday and Sunday. Billed as “no repeat weekends,” their current M72 World Tour has the band playing two different set lists with a different cast of openers in each city, a winning premise that pushed Metallica to dig a little deeper into their cache of heavy metal classics on Friday.
True to stadium-crushing form, the ferocious-as-ever foursome were in Beast Mode during an opening run for the ages at Lumen Field, starting with a sinister battering ram in “Creeping Death” and the galvanizing march of “Harvester of Sorrow.” A full-fisted “Leper Messiah” — precisely the kind of heyday deep cut fans hope for — followed, making an unholy trinity that would be hard to top until a haymaker combo that would later close the show.
Through no fault of the four band members on stage, who were clearly in late-tour form playing the second to last city of the tour, that impressive opening blitz lost a little thunder due to mushy sound that often proved difficult to overcome. Though it would be reined in by the second act, the bass and kick drum were initially overblown in the mix, swallowing up most everything else. Frontman James Hetfield’s biker-gang-tough vocals were echoey all night, sometimes getting lost in the unexpected stadium din.
Lumen Field isn’t a bad-sounding stadium per se, as sports arena concert venues go. But Metallica has sounded far better in far more acoustically challenged stadiums, and they had no trouble dialing in the Seahawks house during their last Seattle visit in 2017. Metallica’s two-hour set often felt like watching a phoenix flying through a storm, a rare and mighty sight to behold, if not as majestic as you know it can be.
Despite the suboptimal sound, Metallica’s first Seattle show in seven years contained plenty of highs. After a stretch of new material from last year’s back-to-roots album “72 Seasons,” interjected with “Death Magnetic” standout “The Day That Never Comes,” Hetfield, guitarist Kirk Hammett, drummer Lars Ulrich and bassist Rob Trujillo threw it back once more with the melodically churning instrumental “Orion,” graced by Hammett’s soaring and squealing guitar work. Hetfield dedicated the classic off “Master of Puppets” to the band’s heyday bassist Cliff Burton, who died in 1986, six months after the heavy metal masterpiece was released.
From there, another beautiful Hammett solo gracefully tumbled into the opening riff of “Nothing Else Matters” — a candidate for the semi-oxymoronic title of best heavy metal ballad of all time — like a gold-medal gymnast.
Heavy metal has historically been music for outsiders. Its abrasive (some might say) qualities often push it to the margins, existing largely outside of the mainstream gaze — so much that it’s a point of pride. That’s part of what makes a Metallica gig so powerful, a communion of disparate outsiders that doesn’t always get to experience their unifying heavy music on such a grand scale.
“We’re a gathering of [expletive] ups and misfits,” Hetfield said after the Black album ballad. “And we belong right here.”
Despite the early sound issues, that sentiment came through loud and clear all night. It felt like every sentient being between the Cascades and the Olympics bellowed along with Hetfield’s searing vocals on the next-up “Sad But True,” a brutal groove-metal death stomp that helped Metallica transcend heavy metal hero status to become a stadium-packing household name.
Metallica’s current tour has the band playing “in the round,” meaning the stage was centered on the 50-yard line instead of one of the end zones. The configuration usually makes for better 360-degree sightlines and opens up more stadium seats, which the band had no trouble filling on Friday, despite doubling down with the two-night stand.
But depending on your seat, the eight giant video towers scattered around the floor eclipsed parts of the stage, occasionally making for a game of peek-a-boo as the guitar-wielding band members moved about the spread-out stage. The tall video silos didn’t seem to justify the amount of real estate they took up until they turned into fiery pistons for a flame-throwing “Fuel” toward the end of the night.
“Burn, Seattle, burn!” Hetfield cackled maniacally midway through the speedway racer from 1997’s “Reload,” which ignited an epic closing run of classics “Seek and Destroy” and “Master of Puppets.”
Forty-three years on, Metallica is still burning strong.
The sound was even worse for the reformed Pantera, who took the stage after an opening set from Mammoth WVH, led by Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang.
Pantera’s retooled lineup is anchored by surviving members Phil Anselmo (vocals) and Rex Brown (bass), with metal’s go-to guitar ringer (and star in his own right) Zakk Wylde and Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante filling in for the Texas heavyweights’ late fraternal nucleus Dimebag Darrell and drummer Vinnie Paul.
The Pantera revival run, technically the band’s first tour in more than 20 years, hasn’t come without its bumps. Last year the band was dropped from several European festivals, presumably over a 2016 incident when video surfaced of Anselmo ending a Dimebag Darrell tribute show by giving a Nazi salute and shouting “white power.” Anselmo, who sure wasn’t laughing in the video, later claimed it was an inside joke because he was drinking white wine that night. Though it was hardly the first time Anselmo — one of the most talented metal vocalists of all time — has been accused of espousing racist views.
Metallica’s two-nighter in Seattle continues Sunday with openers Five Finger Death Punch and Ice Nine Kills.
