Metallica

Venue: Palalottomatica, Rome, Italy
Date: 7/24/09
Reviewed By: Rich Catino

That Was Just Your Life
The End Of The Line
Creeping Death
Of Wolf & Man
One
Broken, Beat And Scarred
Cyanide
Sad But True
No Leaf Clover
The Judas Kiss
The Day That Never Comes
Master Of Puppets
Dyers Eve
Nothing Else Matters
Enter Sandman
Stone Cold Crazy
Phantom Lord
Seek and Destroy

Seeing Metallica in Rome was a bonus on my trip to the Metalway festival in Spain. They return to the stage (finally thrashing the right way) with a better crafted Tallica album, “Death Magnetic”, which the guys are obviously proud of by playing six songs (yeah, I thought it was a bit much too especially when “Puppets” is only represented by the title track with ‘Battery’ and/or ‘Damage Inc.’ left out).

The stage continues to be in the round, minimalistic in design with nothing more than a small platform section to the left and right side of Lars’ drum kit for the pyro to emerge. James’ voice and riffs are the strongest they have been in years.

Kirk maintains a high level of musicianship and shredding as always, and Robert is the perfect time keeper (especially for Lars). And speaking of the Danish drummer, while I was happy to hear a much better drum sound on “Death Magnetic”, like on the album, live Lars is attached to his snare and with a tiny tiny kit all the fills are GONE, GONE people. Lars makes little attempt to play his parts like they were initially recorded and as a result affecting the delivery to the classic songs. Lars…unfortunately…You Are The Weakest Link.

What the coolest thing is about this leg of the tour is the setlist which has been primarily focusing on ‘Death Magnetic” and more importantly everything from the 1991 self titled album backwards. That means you will rarely, if ever, hear something from “Load”, “Reload”, and “St. Anger”.

Night to night, two to four songs could be different from the previous city. Like Rome got ‘Dyers Eve’, ‘Of Wolf and Man’, and ‘Phantom Lord’. All very nice choices. I have also seen ‘Disposable Heroes’, ‘Leper Messiah’, ‘Trapped Under Ice’, ‘No Remorse’, and ‘Ride the Lightning’ in. So it is in your best interest to see Metallica at least once or even twice on this tour.