Wednesday, 23 July, I had the luck of being at a Metallica concert, in Bucharest, at Cotroceni stadium. Living not that far from it and knowing the city pretty much, I arrived early in the morning to check some parts of the city. Some good and bad news came up from then: some parts of the city looked great, with amazing architecture, while some were in very bad shape. The traffic was almost really stuck and since I don’t have a car, I use a subway. There, much to my surprise and pleasure, I noticed in every subway station at least one group with Metallica shirts. The horsemen were drawing nearer.
As evening approached, the weather was getting pretty bad and it started to rain heavily. By the time I arrived at the stadium, I was pretty wet; and it was only the beginning. The line was huge, but it moved very fast, a sign of good organization. As I entered at about 6 pm local time, it was almost packed and the lines for the beer were huge too, but they were moving fast. So after making some supplies and finishing them, the opening act was already warming up. The Sword started suddenly, creating a bit of confusion within the crowd, and perhaps they were unlucky; they could have been quite interesting because they didn’t sound bad, but they made no attempt of trying to communicate with the audience, which led to a half an hour of not so interesting pouring rain heavy metal act that left no strong impact.
After that, there were about 10 minutes of recorded music and sound checking; and then - the ecstasy of gold !! From where I was standing on the grass, surrounded by fellow fans, all hell broke loose. We all started screaming, because we knew what was going to happen next. The ecstasy of gold is the beginning of their concerts for more than 20 years. Suddenly, the masters of the stage were singing Creeping Death in front of about 30 000 frantic people who were wildly singing the lyrics with the band. I have to say, they sang just old tunes, nothing from Load, Re-Load, and St. Anger. Except for Fuel, perhaps, I’m thankful they didn’t !!
Also, they even played it faster than the studio version. After adding just a few greeting words, they started playing For Whom the Bell Tolls, and by that time, everybody knew it was going to be an epic performance.
continue reading "Metallica Live in Bucharest"






























