Did anyone have the sheer fortune to get a last minute Metallica ticket like me? Its great to have a whole new set of Metallica songs to see them play, rather than just dusting of the much loved classics again.

Metallica’s latest album ‘Death magnetic’, has been compared to their metal classic ‘Master of puppets’, probably because it sounds like the closest thing to it. Death magnetic doesnt have the raw production values of ‘Kill ‘em all’ or ‘And justice for all’s technicality. Opening tracks ‘that was just worth life’ and ‘end of the line’ feel as if they’d decided to update ‘Battery’ and the song ‘Master of puppets’ for a modern audience. The same is true of the album closers ‘suicide and redemption’ and ‘my apocalypse’ -its like they wanted to reproduce ‘Orion’ and ‘Damage inc’ from Master of puppets. Death magnetic was indeed a return to form, suprising critics and fans alike by returning to their roots to deliver great heavy metal.

After a powerful set by fellow San Francisco metallers Machine head, Metallica come and launch straight into ‘that was just your life’, and ‘end of the line’, smashing our skulls with the first two Death magnetic tracks, before bringing in three tracks from ‘And Justice for all’. Perhaps aware thats its Justice’s 20th aniversary? I was just happy to get the epic ‘One’, ‘Harvester of sorrow’ and all nine minutes of the albums title track.

The surprise of the evening came from the album ‘Ride the lightning’ in the song ‘fight fire with fire’, which rarely gets an outing. The trip to London was is instantly made worthwhile. Metallica played a total of six tracks from the new album- and they were clearly relishing the chance to play the new material. With lars bouncing around on the kit with added ‘oomph’ and Hetfield having the energy of a 20 year old, running to all four mics onstage at any given time. A much called for encore seems them cover Motorhead’s ‘Overkill’ and ‘Kill ‘em all’ favourites ‘Hit the lights’ and ‘Seek and destroy’.

After seeing them play all of ‘master of puppets’ at Download 2006 i vowed not to see them again because I didnt htink they could top that acheivement. I was wrong, and glad of it, Metallica proved with Death magnetic they could still write fast aggressive music, and tonight proved (to me anyway) they can still deliver a set full of surprises and fist pounding metal.

Just a shame about the trains then huh? Thinking about holding a riverside event near the O2 or want to keep up with London events?

Metallica One Live O2 Arena Concert March 28th 2009

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