In August 1991 the elite of hard guitar sounds honored Basel as part of the “Monsters of Rock” and the name became the program for 50 metal disciples! Metallica swept through Joggeli with (now forbidden) 000 decibels, so that the main act AC / DC seemed like a mild breeze despite Angus Young jumping around wildly and a great show. Legends say that Metallica could still be heard in Rodersdorf, 110 kilometers away. After more than 20 years, Metallica returned to Basel on Friday in the sold-out St. Jakob-Park in Basel and put 20 fans into euphoria - and conjured up a dramatic change in the weather. So the show started in bright sunshine and ended in the truest sense of the word in a small storm. The viewers didn't seem to be bothered in the least by the thunderstorm, on the contrary: It was as if they were energizing lightning and thunder even more!
After the absolute mud fight on Sonisphere 2010 in Jonschwil, the organizational chaos that ultimately drove the organizer into bankruptcy on Sonisphere 2011, also in the Joggeli in Basel, and the Sonisphere 2012 in Yverdon les Bains, finally an all-round successful event with Metallica, Motörhead and Slayer, the Sonisphere 2014 took place last Friday in Basel's FCB St. Jakobs Park, with Kvelertak, Airbourne, Alice in Chains and Metallica. Metallica in Sankt Jakob, that is an event with history. The American quartet last performed here in 1993, the tour based on the so-called black album, which catapulted the band from the top of the heavy metal scene into the ranks of stadium bands, and they have been there ever since - despite weak albums , Line-up changes, alcohol problems and a documentary film that showed the band with a therapist dissecting their own psyche. After Black's album, Metallica was dead and sold out for me personally and the Napster affair confirmed my thinking. But there was nothing that could permanently damage the band-fan relationship and I, too, could forgive the gentlemen and got a taste for it with St. Anger.
Black clearly dominated the audience on Friday, as it should be for a metal (lica) concert. But it quickly became clear that there is also a lot of mainstream going here: visitors with checked shirts and beige shorts, people with hairdos and women and men in Germany jerseys - which is absolutely impossible at a metal concert. Be that as it may, the main thing is that the technology is right and there was no mess here, but padded and that really: the stage weighs 110 tons, around 14 kilometers of cable were laid, 1200 people are on the tour day and 55 40-ton trucks carted the material approach. Two 60 tonne crane trucks and seven forklifts were in constant use, 312 meters of trusses were installed and eleven nightliners brought musicians and crew to the scene. How did a band that play such hard music become one of the greatest rock bands ever? Just for comparison: Slayer and Anthrax, who together with Megadeth and Metallica have formed the “Big Four” of Thrash Metal since the 7s, performed together in front of 1500 people at the ZXNUMX in Pratteln a month ago. In contrast to their companions, Metallica also wrote melodic and ballad-like pieces early on, but that alone cannot explain why tens of thousands flock to Metallica concerts. There must be another reason for this and that is James Hetfield. He is one of the few front men who can fill a stadium with their aura. He stands there with his legs apart, present and with his buddy authority leaves no doubt as to who is in charge here.
The support bands Kvelertak, Airbourne and Alice in Chains could do their best: The metal kings were in town and let everything else fade away! Until Metallica, the sound in the entire stadium was utter grit and did not do justice to the bands. Pity! But when Metallica got started after a short renovation phase, the sound was extremely fat! Even the tried and tested intro of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” got the crowd going more than any song performed up to that point. The big stadium clock was draped with a black cloth and the high-speed attack “Battery” from 1986 rang out from the stage. It seemed as if Metallica wanted to stop time. At the latest with the seamlessly attached “Master of Puppets” from the same year, Metallica sounded significantly better than before six years ago in Jonschwil. The hands went up to the back rows and the band kept cutting out one board after the other. Bassist Robert Trujillo has been “new” for ten years and immediately fought for his place in the band's dense frequency spectrum and the metallic rumble of his five-string was audible even when Hetfield and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett were pumping heavy riffs, such as in merciless “Ride the Lightning”.
The crowd was hungry for the titles that could be chosen in advance via online voting. “Metallica by Request” is the motto of the current tour, which means that the setlist is determined and published in advance of each gig by the votes of the fans via the Internet. Service to paying customers, because whoever has such masses in front of them must not pretend artistic freedom, but has to provide entertainment. The fan wants to hear hits, because he spends money on it and accepts completely overcrowded extra trains, in which there are far too few toilets, for the journey. Unfortunately, the entire setlist was not determined by online voting: During the concert, the audience was repeatedly asked to vote between three songs that were still open via SMS. Of course for 80 cents per vote, which at times let the event drift into a really sleazy sales show.
Thus, Metallica's appearance moved between a routine concert and an absolutely marginal sales show. It was a miracle that you couldn't take part in an SMS raffle with stupid questions in the style of modern TV shows. This superfluous audience interaction for voting was extremely annoying, so even before the actual gig the band members addressed the fans via video clips to ask them to “vote”. But if that wasn't enough, James Hetfield insisted on pointing out this voting option again and again during the performance, repeatedly presenting the very tight intermediate result using a chic bar chart and asking the fans to “do their best” - What was meant was: your money. And even if Metallica played in Basel, not every fan should have been perfectly happy at this request concert. In view of the flirtatious sell-out show, one wished for the evil troupe from the times before the black album, they had a deep black soul after all.
Apart from these annoying interruptions, Metallica showed themselves to be routine during the two and a half hour show. Accompanied by successful visuals and video clips that ran over the LED wall, the band from the Californian Bay Area fired the desired set list almost flawlessly to the last corner of the stadium. Metallica played what the audience wanted and delivered solid work with no fuss. The four guys from San Francisco played the 16 most popular songs and delivered “Metallica to order”. The sound was outstanding, especially the pieces from the early years rely primarily on overwhelming sound walls. A more than 360 square meter LED wall hung over the entire width of the stage, on which not only recordings of the musicians could be seen from four different camera perspectives, soldiers and skeletons marched up, blood dripped and it became a perfectly coordinated staging required. The light show was breathtaking, drew crazy patterns on the stands, sawed the stage with bright laser beams and transformed the crowd into a blood-red sea, from which only James Hetfield white stood out. He kept looking for contact with the fans, in between his dirty laugh - even if it came across as a bit too rehearsed, the master let the puppets dance and again and again it went from the 56-meter-wide stage onto the catwalk into the masses.
When Metallica played the only new song of the evening, it started: In the cover of darkness, a storm front had pushed over Joggeli, which now opened the locks. The first performance of the song, which may appear on the new album, thus fell completely through the water. And “Lords Of Summer” isn't that bad. With the gallop rhythm and the changes to difficult halftime, Metallica are close to their own plagiarism. Anyway, time to get beer supplies, some efforts were made to ensure that during the week. Three semi-trailers with a total of 400 pallets of liquid were ready in the stadium. Five refrigerated trucks and another five refrigerated cells cooled the drinks to five degrees, and an additional 50 flow coolers - as the mobile stands are called in technical jargon - were installed in addition to the existing stands in the stadium. In addition, it was not without a certain irony that a rain shower poured from the sky just after this battle cry for the summer. After all, Hetfield knew how to take advantage of the sudden change in weather and stood on the ramp in the pouring rain for the entire duration of “Sad but True”. This is solidarity with the fans, who sang along with the catchy verses of the massive shuffles at full speed. And not only Hetfield, but also guitarist Kirk Hammet and bassist Robert Trujillo regularly stood on the jetty and did not leave the fans alone in the rain, but stood with them in the rain and accelerated so much that even the lightning bolts that hit the St. Jakob Park winced, became part of the staging.
During their performance, Metallica repeatedly emphasized their closeness to the fans, who they consider part of the “Metallica Family” or the fifth member of the band. This was also expressed by the fact that some fans were allowed to stand on the edge of the stage during the entire show. Somehow I miss the snotty thing, everything “Love, Peace and Happiness”, the front man seems tamed. It cannot be denied that there is a different man on stage than two decades ago. If he had a rather threatening, dark aura then, Hetfield now looks like a friend. As often as he did in the songs "Die!" or "Kill!" screams - and that is by no means rare, so often Hetfield proclaims “Metallica loves you, Basel” in his announcements. I find it difficult not to see any contradiction in this. Hetfield can demonstratively stand in the rain for so long. Lightning flashed across the sky throughout the performance and Hetfield, Hammet and above all Trujillo beat their instruments steadfastly. That's why this genre is called Thrash Metal. Thrash with H. Not trash, because that's not rubbish, but a shredder that crushes and crushes all the rubbish that messes up your life, until only a feeling of numbness and relief remains. Good Thrash Metal works like meditation, or something like that ...
Only towards the end came “Nothing Else Matters” and immediately afterwards “Enter Sandman”. The audience was never left behind and it was all about these songs. Hetfield would have said “Sing it!” Save before the chorus, the Metallica crowd took part of their own accord and with an enthusiasm that even the endorphin-used FCB stadium rarely experiences. “St. Anger ”opened the encores, a comparatively new piece that is probably one of the harder ones in the band's history. Then the gentlemen played the song chosen by SMS, in Basel the audience decided on “Orion” until “Seek & Destroy” was released. There was another violent flash in the sky, then the band said goodbye. Metallica played the last piece shortly after eleven, while every available lamp in the stadium was already on. That was probably not because they wanted to show the musicians their soaking wet audience, but rather because the curfew in Basel also applies to rock gods.
All in all, it can be said: Metallica just. Two and a half hours of world class. After more than 30 years of stage presence, the four exceptional musicians are not only technically unbeatable, but also seemed to be having a really good day in Basel. At least they gave the impression that they wanted every song they played. And how they played them: Hetfield changed his guitars more often than other people changed their underwear during the week. In addition, there was a simply outstanding sound, powerful, cutting, crystal clear, absolutely pure with the ballads, which the band cleverly mixed between the thrashy songs and so took the breath out to immediately accelerate again. The fact that the fans are allowed to redefine the selection of songs every evening of the “By Request” tour is ultimately not much more than a publicity stunt. Ultimately, in this online voting, mass tastes always prevail over insider wishes. In view of the voting results, a major German metal magazine recently ran the headline “Ihr Langweiler!” and meant the fans. However, it will be interesting to see what the marketing department of James Hetfield's band will come up with. After Metallica recently played a media-effective gig in Antarctica (Antarctica), everything seems to be possible in terms of marketing. Here are some suggestions: “Titanica - Drown'em all” or “Desertica - Meet the Sandman”. It can be voted.
setlist:
- Battery
- Master of puppets
- Welcome home (sanitarium)
- Ride the lightning
- The Unforgiven
- Creeping death
- Lords of Summer
- Sad but true
- Fade to Black
- ... And Justice for all
- One
- For whom the Bell is great
- Whiskey in the jar
- Nothing else matters
- Enter Sandman
- St Anger
- Orion
- Seek & Destroy
Encore:
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