Kirk Hammet giving it some during the encore. O2 Arena, March 28th 2009

Just back from seeing Metallica at the O2 Arena.  A late return, courtesy of London Transport who closed the Jubilee line due to “essential engineering works”.  I think the only way they could have annoyed us more would be if they had announced it was closed due to unessential engineering works.

The return home was not helped by the clocks going forward an hour shortly after I got in.The transport woes may have made the journeys to and from the Greenwich peninsula a bit grim, but the concert in-between was every bit as good as you would expect. Awesome in fact.   I was slightly disapointed that, despite playing 6 tracks from the new album,they missed out my favourite – Cyanide – but that is a minor quibble.

Long shot of the stage.

We decided to get something to eat around London Bridge before heading to the O2.   Had we known that the Jubilee Line was out of order we probably wouldn’t have done that, because it meant that we missed most of the support acts, just catching the last couple of songs from Machine Head.  Or as they prefer to call themselves Machine Fucking Head.  I am not too heartbroken about that though: I have streamed some of their tracks and they sound OK on record, but they didn’t do anything for me as a live act.

I was very impressed with the O2 itself though.  A fantastic venue for music.  It was by no means a quiet concert but the sound was clear and left me with none of the ringing of the ears that Paul Weller at the K2 did. The place is enormous.  I don’t think I have seen any venue so tall.  Our seats were in the distinctly un-metal corporate boxes, with carpeting and soft furnishings, looking down on the heaving mosh pit below. At my age probably the best place for me… brilliant view though.

Metallica’s light show was great too.  They started by playing the first song in the dark except for the best laser show I have seen, before moving onto the bright lights and the inevitable explosions and flames.

For the encore the lights came up and dozens of Metallica balloons came down

The set list was a good mix of old and new songs.  Nothing from Ride the Lightning and, less surprising, nothing from Re-Load or St. Anger but all the other albums were represented. The full setlist is here.

My only regret is that I could only sneak in the compact camera and not the DSLR and telephoto lense.