Metallica

Do you like your rock shows huge, loud & engaging? Do you like stage sets that fill entire arena floors, filled with gigantic set pieces & enough pyro to blow up a small country? Do you like singing along to tightly played, iconic songs for 2-3 hours with thousands of friends? If yes, Metallica are your guys.

Each show starts when The Ecstasy of Gold (theme song from The Good, The Bad & The Ugly) plays over the PA, and crowd anticipation hits a fever pitch with thousands shouting along with the melody. Just thinking about the opening gives me goosebumps. Once Ecstasy hits its crescendo, they hit the stage like a thunderbolt, hammering through their lineup of classic tunes to a screaming, fist pumping, metal-sign-throwing crowd. Grizzled metal fans join together with legions of kids (oftentimes their own kids), shouting out every word of every song, and even singing along with guitar solos & melodies. Their set list varies each night. There are standards that they have to play, and you'll of course hear plenty of their big songs such as Enter Sandman and Master of Puppets. But they mix things up extremely well and no two nights are ever quite the same. It's amazing to me that after 30+ years and thousands of shows, the guys in the band still love mixing things up, still love goofing around on stage, still love engaging with the crowd, and obviously just love playing live & generating crazy crowd energy.

Quite simply, they are the kings of arena metal. Bow to the kings!

You have to imagine that there’s nobody of a certain age who wouldn’t consider - privately or otherwise - the prospect of a Limp Bizkit live show to be anything other than riotously good fun. There’s few rock crowds in the world that wouldn’t go wild for Chocolate Starfish’s holy trinity - ‘Rollin’, ‘My Way’ and ‘Take a Look Around’ - but scratch the surface, and you come to realise that their canon is much stronger than you might remember; ‘My Generation’, ‘Nookie’ and anarchist anthem ‘Break Stuff’ are all setlist staples, too. Fred Durst, of course, remains one of the world’s most ridiculous men, but look at Bizkit’s festival form these past few years, and there’s no question he’s capable of holding even the hugest of crowds in the palm of his hand. Wes Borland’s appetite for frankly terrifying stage get-ups hasn’t faded, either, and there’s just the right amount of out-and-out silliness in the set - take that cover of George Michael’s ‘Faith’, for instance - to confirm that nobody in the band is taking themselves too seriously. Current indications are that material from newest record Gold Cobra is beginning to nudge its way into the fans’ affections; even if it had failed in that regard, though, the Jacksonville outfit would surely be happy with the sheer bedlam that their biggest hitters incite night after night.

Saw them at Rockville this year. Was impressed by their stage show. Saw them last nite in Montgomery Alabama. Small venue but it didnt matter to Avatar. They brought a bunch of energy and were amazing. If you get a chance to see them.....go do it. You won't be disappointed.