Having completed my interview with Michael Paulson of Volbeat (check it out here: http://cwgcoldiron.blogspot.com/2009/12/interview-with-volbeat-before-metallica.html) it was now time to start thinking about the rest of the day. By my side was my co- pilot for this operation, resident metal head and lead guitarist of Flawless Design, Jon Tobin. It was now 3:00pm and doors didn't open until 6:30. Being in the middle of a cow town and not wanting to leave, and risk having to pay $12 bucks for parking when we came back, we decided to stick around. Our options were limited and it was freezing, so we decided to hang by the car. So, we got out to the car and assessed how the Volbeat interview went. From there, we listened to Death Magnetic and talked music for a couple of hours. Much Dr. Pepper was consumed.
The time flew by. Next thing I knew it was 5:45 and time to go pick up our tickets and press passes from will- call. By 6:30 we were in line on our way into Arco Arena to see Volbeat (who I'm a huge fan of and had interviewed earlier), Machine Head (who I had never seen live), and the gods of metal, Metallica. 
By 7:00 I knew what a $9 beer tasted like was still munching on the most expensive popcorn known to man.
7:00 came and Volbeat hit the stage like clockwork. They tore it up for almost exactly 30 minutes (as scheduled). They rocked songs like Caroline #1 and Sad Man's Tongue. They brought it. Opening for Metallica is no small task. They did their thing and got off the stage. I was happy to see them play, but disappointed they didn't play longer.
Machine Head came on next. I had never seen them play live before. They rocked the shit out of Sacramento. I honestly don't know the name of a single one of their songs. It didn't matter. They put on a show and got the place ready for Metallica. The highlight of their set was their cover of Pantera's “fucking hostile
.” Tonight was the fifth anniversary of the death of Dimebag Darrel. They paid homage... big time. He would be proud of their performance. The last song blew the place up the place, “the burning red.” (or something like that... Machine Head fans- help me out!)
This set the stage for Metallica. It was a solid 45 minutes of setting up the stage, tuning instruments, preparing the pyrotechnics, etc. I met a nice guy sitting behind me. When I told him it was my first Metallica show he started talking to me like I'd never heard of the band. Never mind that I know every fucking riff they've ever played. He offered to buy my press pass. I actually thought about it, but thought better and kept it.
Eventually, the lights went down and “fields of gold” came on, signaling the arrival of the band.
They hit the stage and ripped through, “that was just your life.” After that, Hetfield got the crowd going with some conversation. He talked a lot about the crowd bringing the energy for the band. That was a theme of the night.
Next came, “broken, beat and scarred,” which went over well.
From there, Hetfield said it would be a special night and that we would do it together, “with some old stuff.” That led to them killing it for the next two hours.
Here are some notes from the rest of the show:
They played about half of “Death Magnetic.” There were no songs from St. Anger or Load and only “fuel” from Re-load, which was a good thing. “Kill em all” was grossly underrepresented in my opinion. The Black album got three songs played.
Hetfield butchered the acoustic opening of, “fade to black.” Hammet botched the first couple of notes of each section of, “One.” Hammet did a sweet electric solo at one point and an acoustic one right before, “nothing else matters.”
Trujillo was basically awesome on every song. Ulrich was hardly noticeable, but solid. He also must be a fucking track star or something to play the way he does for that long.
The pyrotechnics were damn hot on my skin from my seats and I was 50 feet from the stage (see pics).
I would guess that there were about 10,000 fans in attendance. I would further guess that about 8,000 of them (myself included) knew the words to every single song. There is nothing like the camaraderie of fans at a Metallica show.
Halfway through the set one fan started yelling, “one more song.”
Hetfield noticed a girl in the front of the crowd, which led to a conversation. The result was him noting to her, “you're 11 years old and in the front at a Metallica show... where do you go from here?” One of life's great questions.
Their performance of, “master of puppets” was the loudest thing I have ever heard... that record lasted about 25 minutes.
When the set had wound down, Hetfield teased the audience for a while. He suggested, “You can go back to your jobs tomorrow, tonight you are with Metallica, and this is our night.”He finally offered up one more song if, “we give him every last bit of energy we have.” So we did. Our reward: the loudest thing I have ever heard, their performance of, “seek and destroy.”
The show ended and we got the hell out of there. It was a loooooooooooong day. It was also one of the greatest musical experiences of my life.
Jon and I hardly said a word on the way home. An occasional, “that was awesome” was all we said... and it was all that was needed.
