This week, Metallica’s WorldWired tour arrived in Charlotte marking the first time the band has visited the Queen City in almost a decade, and the party was pretty metal, just as you’d imagine. On show #110 out of 159, Metallica came armed with the timeless classics, but also plenty from the album that sent them on tour in the first place, Hardwired..To Self-Destruct. Over nearly two and a half hours, Metallica proved once again that they’re one of, if not the greatest American heavy metal band of all time - oh yeah, and worth the steep ticket price.
The price of admission to one of the final 50 shows on the tour will cost at least $100, if you didn’t grab tickets when they initially went on sale. But it’s certainly worth it. From the production to the nostalgia to simply the impressive amount of time spent on stage, Metallica isn’t just out for a cash grab. The foursome emerged from the darkness like prizefighters, storming out from the players’ tunnel in the Spectrum Center to Ennio Morricone’s familiar “The Ecstasy of Gold.” James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo charged down the runway through a sea of black (the dominant t-shirt color among fans, not because it was dark), rounded the in-the-round stage before mounting it to endless whoops and cheers.
The applause continued into Metallica’s opener “Hardwired,” in which Hetfield, Hammett and Trujillo each bounced around the stage appealing to all corners of the arena. There wasn’t a bad seat in the house as Hetfield spent at most 30 seconds at each of the handful of mic stands arranged on the stage. He made his rounds, appeasing each and every fan that pinned themselves to the barricade for 19 songs.
The new material was solid, from the aforementioned “Hardwired” to “Atlas, Rise!,” it was the perfect way to start a show that was both highlighting what Metallica was putting out in 2018, but also celebrating the masterpieces. During “Moth Into Flame” dozens of LED drones took flight and twirled above the band providing a nice piece of visual artistry to accompany the track. But as cool as it was to see, when it comes to Metallica it’s not necessarily about all the additional frills. It’s all about songs like “Spit Out the Bone” - a seven minute long earth-shattering 21st century metal ballad.
Speaking of ballads, of course there was “One,” “Master of Puppets,” “Enter Sandman” and the many other songs just about anyone in the venue could’ve predicted. This what the majority of fans came for, evidenced by the many who’d throw their head back and rise two hands of horns into the sky. It was tough for the audience to contain their excitement, which resulted in the forming of a few old school mosh pits on the ground level. The crowd came to head bang and cause a ruckus with the thrash icons, and Metallica rose to challenge. Even after 16,500 minutes on stage this tour (110 shows x 150 minutes on stage, if my math is correct), the band appeared to have plenty of gas left in the tank. Heck, after each rockstar made their rounds handing out guitar picks and drum sticks following the final song of the night, they decided to sing one last number: “Happy Birthday” to Trujillo, who turned 54 at midnight, before exiting into the darkness the same way they entered.
