Metallica - AT&T Park, San Francisco, California (2016)

For most bands, playing the entirety of “The Boys Are Back in Town” by Thin Lizzy as your intro music would be something akin to overkill. Of course, Metallica is not most bands. The sheer euphoria that erupts across AT&T Park when James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Robert Trujillo, and Kirk Hammett do take the stage is deafening. These are performers who live for their fans, a point Hammett reiterates to me when I speak to him ahead of the show. “I don’t see our fans as being average at all,” he says. “Our fans stand up for the creed that Metallica is all about, and that’s highly un-average.”

All the evidence you need to back up Hammett’s claims is packed into a Muni train heading towards AT&T Park. Crusty, old Metallica fans stand shoulder-to-shoulder, swapping war stories and wearing tour shirts from the ’80s. I hear one man refer to the opener as “Crap the Elephant,” uniting his fellow concertgoers in the long-held belief that they must hate whoever opens for Metallica on principle. When Cage the Elephant actually does take the stage to open the show, they are met not with boos but kind indifference. The crowd is too excited for the first headlining show Metallica has played in their hometown in a number of years to give Cage much energy.

TRACKLIST

01. Creeping Death
02. For Whom The Bell Tolls
03. Fuel
04. King Nothing
05. Ride The Lightning
06. Kirk Solo #1
07. The Unforgiven
08. The Memory Remains
09. Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
10. Sad But True
11. Bass Solo
12. Wherever I May Roam
13. One
14. Master Of Puppets
15. Battery
16. Kirk Solo #2
17. Fade To Black
18. Seek And Destroy
19. Whiskey In The Jar
20. Nothing Else Matters
21. Enter Sandman