ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 28, 1997 TAG: 9702280047
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: concert review
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITER
If power tools could sing, they would probably sound a lot like Metallica.
But they can't, so that leaves the four members of Metallica sounding a lot like power tools, melodic ones at that.
They started their show Wednesday night in front of 9,626 people at Roanoke Civic Center at about the same time the Grammy Awards began in New York.
Their first song could have been a response to their omission from this year's ceremonies: it was called "So What?" And so began more than two
hours of hard rock - the kind of rock that proves Metallica has not gone soft, despite a new album some have labeled "alternative" instead of "metal."
They played plenty of songs from that album ("Load") including "Ain't My Bitch," "Until It Sleeps," "King Nothing," and "Wasting My Hate." In
concert, the songs weighed twice as much as they did on the album, and "Hero of the Day" got the nod from hundreds of Bic lighters.
There was plenty of older stuff - "One," "Creeping Death," "Master of Puppets" and the like - to keep even the Metallica purists happy. And there
were definitely some purists there.
"Hey, what's with all the preps?" one drunken fan screamed (possibly at
me, but there was a guy wearing a French-collared shirt whom he could have been pointing at, too).
Most of the crowd was adorned in Metallica T-shirts, some new, some veterans of the washing machine. (It has been six years, after all, since
the group released "Metallica," the last album before "Load.")
Want a tough job? Try being a Metallica bodyguard for a night.
It must be something akin to serving as a Secret Service agent when Bill Clinton makes a trip to McDonald's. The band members entered the arena
without dimming the lights, and followed bassist Jason Newsted in a loop around two stages, hands out, high-fiving all they could reach. The bodyguards followed, trying to keep the band's black T-shirts out of the grasp of an adoring audience. They made the rounds between songs, too, and during them, sometimes standing on the civic center floor instead of on the metal stages.
(All told, were everyone who touched a hand of a Metallica member to refrain from washing for one week, Roanoke's water consumption would decrease by thousands of gallons.)
"Thirsty?" lead singer James Hetfield asked as he poured the remainder of his water on the crowd of sweaty people who chose to stand for the show,
pressed against a gate near the stage. Newsted squirted a water bottle into open mouths.
And if you think the body guards had it tough? Metallica's roadies are now prepared to enter Hollywood as stunt doubles.
They put together a convincing act when a metal lighting structure fell, leaving one brave soul dangling from a rope in mid-air.
As the flashpots went off (again) another sacrificial roadie "caught fire" and streaked across the stage, flames flowing behind him, until he was extinguished by his friends and carried off on a stretcher, waving at the crowd.
That last part was, frankly, a bit much, but it certainly explains why there are flames in Metallica's new T-shirt design.
Sound for Metallica was muddy on fast songs, clearer on the slow ones.
Corrosion of Conformity played for only 35 minutes - mercifully. It was impossible to hear what they were playing, saying, or banging out up there. But the crowd was polite, as only a Metallica crowd can be: Heads were banging through every minute.
LENGTH: Medium: 66 linesby CNB