#150 - Posted by Matthew on 19 January 2009 at 16:13:00 EST

Luck... Runs... Out.

Lyrics from the song "All Nightmare Long," growled by Metallica's front man James Hetfield from their latest album, Death Magnetic.

I was in attendance at the concert they put on at TD Banknorth Garden last night, and certainly did not feel as though my luck had run out.

Death Magnetic, in my opinion, represents a "reboot" for the band. Following their self-titled multi-platinum album released in 1991, they released several progressively more "ho-hum" (but not terrible) albums in the mid to late 90's. This decline came to head when someone (probably Bob Rock) declared, "Lets get rid of the guitar solos that define us as a band and make the drums sound like pots and pans." Thus was born 2003's St. Anger.

But there was none of that at the concert last night. This show was entirely bereft of "ho-hum," and "lackluster" may as well have been on an entirely separate planet.

The concert began with "The Ecstasy of Gold," the iconic piece from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which Metallica has used at the beginning of their concerts for as long as I can remember.

Then the lights were killed, and the arena reverberated with the sound of a beating heart. Then the band comes in slowly but surely, and BOOM! They dove into the blisteringly fast hook for "That Was Just Your Life," as the arena erupted into a dazzling laser-light show.

The band was full of energy. The stage was massive. It was set up directly in the middle of The Garden, dominating the area usually taken up by the Parkay Floor when the Celtics are in town. It was setup with the drums on a rotating platform and mic stands all around the perimeter of the stage, so that the band could move about at will and keep the crowd in every part of the arena involved.

Above the stage, the lighting was attached to massive steel coffin-shaped rigging. Eight of these hung overhead, suspended by heavy-duty chains. A series of pulleys allowed the coffins to move and rotate, bathing the band and audience alike in light.

That's the greatest thing about a Metallica show: the crowd involvement. You don't feel as if you are watching a concert, Metallica makes you feel like you are participating in the concert. The audience and the band operate as a single unit.

The set list was heavily laced with the band's new material, which is no terrible thing by any stretch. The set list also included many of their old standbys, focusing solely on their catalog prior to 1996, including "One," "For Whom the Bell Tolls," and my favorite, "...And Justice For All."

The show ended with James asking for the house lights to be brought up so he could see the audience, so that there would be no excuse for anyone failing to sing along to the 1981 thrash masterpiece, "Seek and Destroy."

As the song progressed, dozens of giant black "Metallica" beach balls fell on the crowd. The only downside was that there was not much play with those beach balls, as the people they fell on tended to hoard them, like Gollum and his "Precious."

We followed the show with a round of beers at the Boston Beer Works (they have a beer called "The Black Rider," which I highly recommend to anyone that enjoys a dark beer), and a drive home through some of the most poorly-plowed highways ever. We actually spun out once, but managed to get ourselves back on track. It was worth it.

All in all, this was a damned good show. In 18 days, I will be going to see Coheed and Cambria, who are without a doubt my current favorite band. But Metallica is going to be a difficult act to follow.