Sunday, October 2, 2016

Stay Positive Sunday: There Is No Escape

Normally, I'd have some kind of long-winded explanation here about not posting and falling in and out of productivity and how busy I've been.

Fuck all that bullshit, here's Metallica.



Last week, I was lucky enough to see this band live at Webster Hall in New York - a 1500 person venue being played by the biggest metal band in the world.  It was, if nothing else, a profoundly unique experience, and one of those things that makes me eternally grateful I live in the city I live in, and  that I work at the job I have.  But that's all fluff and filler - the bottom line is this: this was a fucking amazing show, and Metallica, for whatever doubts you may have about them, are still the kings.

See, I'm a metalhead.  If you're reading this blog you're at least tangentially aware of that.  And metalheads, at least in my experience with the genre, can be a highly judgmental bunch.  This isn't news, nor is it particularly unique to metal - fandom in general is equal parts excitement and entitlement.  But metal in particular has this obsession with being a "true" fan - that you're hard, or old school, or into this stuff on a level beyond the sheep around you.  It leads, in short, to assholes, and nothing quite brings out the asshole-ishness like Metallica does.

See, Metallica, like any band that's been around and active for 30 years, has had a storied history, and has gone through a lot of changes over the years.  There's the countless line-ups shifts over the years, including the loss of original bassist Cliff Burton1.  There's the changes to the band's sound - if you ever want to burn an hour or two, get two or three self-avowed Metallica fans together and ask them what they think of the Black Album.  And there's the band's public persona; their rather messy fights against music piracy and their frankly unashamed embrace of mainstream popularity that doesn't sit well with those aforementioned true fans, who like to claim that Metallica sold out.  All this leads up to one simple fact: Metallica, especially modern Metallica, is divisive as hell.  

And I'm not going to sit here and pretend to be above this!  I pick favorites just like anyone else.  I think everything after Puppets suffers from the lack of Burton's touch, though I don't hate the mainstream/prog direction of that album, and the ones that followed, as much as some do.  And while some of the songs off upcoming album Hardwired don't seem half bad, I generally don't touch the band's post-Black Album output as it is...less than solid.

The point of all this, however, is that last Tuesday at Webster Hall none of it made a damn bit of a difference.  Thirty years of history - to say nothing of thirty years worth of miles on the band - were forgotten in an instant.  Maybe it was the setting and the tiny crowd, heightening the entire experience and making everything just that much more intense.  Maybe it was the band itself, energized after taking a five-year break to record this new album and back in New York for the first time.  Maybe it was just me, exhausted and exhilarated after one of the hardest weeks of my life and finally able to just throw my hands up and scream.  But from the opening chords of "Battery" to the final, glorious moments of "Seek & Destroy," I wasn't ranking albums, waiting on a different set list, and wondering how this would have sounded with another line-up.  I was just gloriously present, and on fire with the kind of pure excitement that you only get from live metal.




1. This show at Webster Hall was, by the way, on September 27th - the 30 year anniversary of Burton's death. The band played Orion in tribute to him and it was, as expected, excellent. That said, they didn't really dwell on it: this wasn't a memorial show in any way, which I think was probably a wise decision.

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