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METALLICA
SAD BUT TRUE

If anyone had a better week than the Red Sox, it was Sully Erna. First, the night after the Sox had dispensed with the Yankees, nine members of the team showed up on stage with Godsmack during an unadvertised gig at the Lansdowne Street pool hall Lucky Strike. Then the following Monday, the second night of the Metallica/Godsmack tour stop at the FleetCenter, Sully joined James Hetfield during an encore duet of "Sad But True" — an honor I’ve never seen Metallica bestow on any member of an opening band. Lucky bitch.

Sharing the spotlight has never been Metallica’s strong suit, and if their latest tour didn’t differ much in the actual playing from past visits, Hetfield’s generosity offered a clue that there have been subtle changes to Team Metallica in the Dr. Phil era. The good news is that sports therapist Phil Towle, whose touchy-feely aphorisms are now a part of band lore thanks to the documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, was not on stage. But you could almost feel his presence. The band performed in the round, an arrangement suiting a group who were not on speaking terms until fairly recently, allowing each of them — Hetfield, simian bassist Robert Trujillo, dandyish guitarist Kirk Hammett, and disheveled drummer Lars Ulrich, who looked as if he’d just stepped outside to fetch the morning paper — to address the audience without his mates getting in the way. On those occasions when they accidentally faced in the same direction, they almost looked like a real band.

Fifteen years ago, the Metallica of . . . And Justice For All were gatekeepers of heavy metal’s righteous indignation — a role that its frontman, now coming to terms with his personal failures, no longer relishes. At the FleetCenter, when they dusted off the rarely performed "Holier Than Thou" from the "Black Album," it was clear that this time, the "you are" whom Hetfield was pointing his "judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged" finger at was the man in the mirror. Metallica, as Hetfield now sees it, is little more than an anger-removal machine, a repository for the bad-thoughts-we-must-not-think. "We don’t want you going home with that shit," he told the audience after "The Thing That Should Not Be." "This is the safest place for you to leave it [your anger]. Every one of these songs is an opportunity to get it out." With that, they launched into "Frantic," which fortunately was one of the set’s few nods to St. Anger. But soon several fans standing near me gasped when Hetfield went down on his knees for a solo — it’s not a posture anyone associates with the man. One of those fans, obviously disappointed, resorted to the kind of homophobic joke that metal fans invariably visit on their lapsed heroes, lisping to a friend, "He mutht make hith huthband very happy."

BY CARLY CARIOLI

Issue Date: November 5 - 11, 2004
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