The biggest controversy in recent European festival style concert history has been the inclusion of Metallica as the headliners for this year’s Glastonbury festival, one of the very few events that the Bay Area rockers hadn’t been a part of yet.
Glastonbury has been known as a bit of a hippie/hipster haven, as a result heavy metal music has not been seen as a welcome addition to the lineup. Aside from the aggressive, hard charging, metal that the Men in Black are known for there was the whole issue of James Hetfield serving as the narrator for The Hunt on The History Channel, and how that didn’t quite jive with their hippie values. This even led to a petition being created in the hopes of removing the band from the bill.
All I’ve heard is how Metallica was going to bomb at this event, it wasn’t “their type of crowd,” their music was “too hard, too aggressive,” for this style of event, and how one member of a band that maybe three out of ten people asked could name a song from stated that they were “Shite.”
It seemed as if the odds of Metallica delivering a stellar performance were slime to none, how could they possibly hope to put on a great show when the entire crowd was pretty much planted against them headed into the show? That said, the members of Metallica weren’t deterred by this, as always they were looking at the uphill battle, even launching their own special GlasTallica shirt posting up the negative comments made on the back.
Headed into the event with their back against the wall, with all the moment going in the opposite direction, the masters of metal took the stage Saturday with one goal in mind, make this the greatest possible event anyone in the crowd had attended. Once Metallica hit the stage Twitter was set afire with comments from those in attendance, as much as the band wasn’t supposed to have any support, stating that the crowd was massive and that the band put on one hell of a show.
As a supporter of the band, this doesn’t surprise me at all, the band has always worked hard to put on the best show possible, making their performances more into a spectacle than just playing some music. With the naysayers placed firmly in their place, Metallica has now rocked one of the most unexpected events for a metal band to play, there is no limit to what they can accomplish. What’s next, killing a set at the Academy of Country Music Awards?
