He teases a riff so the crowd know what’s about to happen before initiating the by-now standard call and response for Seek & Destroy. As he does, the hazy orange behind the band – way too big to be called a backdrop, more an apocalyptic sky – gives way to a garage door opening to show a modest practice space within, presumably modelled after the one Metallica had in their very early days. The scene is in black and white, symbolising that past, and soon shifts to navigating the surrounding run-down city streets, the 20,000-strong crowd travelling with the band as they run through the song.
It’s another phenomenal moment in an evening of phenomenal moments. Of overwhelming moments. Of “Fuck! Am I really seeing this?” moments. Over two hours, James, Kirk Hammett, Rob Trujillo and Lars Ulrich present a series of overwhelming immersive experiences that redefine what a live gigs are and what they can do. Because most of the time – unless you’re right by the stage – it’s impossible to tear yourself away from the spectacles taking place on every side of you.
Even before the band start playing, the scene distorts your notion of reality. Because what you see is a stage loaded with guitars, basses, drums, a piano, a Lemmy cutout, a pinball machine, all in front of a plethora of ’Tallica fan flags and banners that rise up into infinity. There’s also the head and arm of the Lady Justice sculpture from the …And Justice For All, looking as if those appendages are ready to be shipped off to a museum.
It all looks so real, but then you remember that not only are they giant – like, really giant – they’re also just on a screen. It’s a mindfuck, to say the least. When the set starts, it cranks that up to 11. Opener Battery begins with a person running through a calm landscape littered with makeshift wooden graves before Creeping Death reveals a mystical world ravaged by time and weather, rain and lighting filling the artificial sky above the band and crowd. The place becomes a church for Now That We’re Dead – the magnified members band appearing inside stained glass windows that feel a thousand, if not a million, times bigger than their real-life counterparts – while Wherever I May Roam becomes a vertigo-inducing train ride through various cities.