Metallica, Etihad Stadium. 18th June 2019

Tonight’s gig... Metallica! ...and it’s a bit hit and miss. Metallica, who have got old, have a lot of great songs in their catalogue, but they have a lot of samey sounding dross too. The split tonight was about 60/40 in favour of the former thankfully, but there was more to piss me off. Namely the sound mix which I can only assume was mixed by a tone deaf tour ruined roadie. Granted stadiums aren’t the best for sound, but I’ve been to enough gigs here to know it can be done well... and this wasn’t. An ill advised attempt at covering ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ sounded pretty dodgy with just bass and guitar. Why do bands think it’s acceptable to cover Roses/Oasis just because you’re in Manchester!!? On the upside the minimal stage set up essentially just a mammoth base to house a gigantic screen looked pretty cool and said screen was used well. By the end of set, at over two hours, that was clearly just leading up to the encore of ‘Nothing Else Matters’ and ‘Enter Sandman’, I’d had enough. Halve the set, cut out the crap no one wants to hear, hire a sound man with ears and this would’ve been awesome... a spot of sunshine would’ve been good too, although it was amusing watching the old bastards get soaked! Welcome to Manchester.