18th
ROOOOOOOOOOCK
You may or may not be aware that the entire reason for going to Europe was to see The Big Four in concert; that’s Anthrax, Slayer, Megadeth, and Metallica. We arrived during Anthrax’s set, as you can see behind us. We had already bought our shirts and were ready to rock the fuck out
Second set was Megadeth. The sound quality wasn’t so great, so I could barely hear any of the lyrics unless Dave Mustaine accidentally leaned too close to the microphone. It was still good to rock out; they played 7 songs from Rust in Peace (20th anniversary of the album, as you can see from the shirt above), and Sweating Bullets, Symphony of Destruction, and Peace Sells were the other notable songs. I love rocking out to Megadeth.
Robin wanted to get closer to the center of the stage, against my better judgment. We were pretty close to the front, right in the middle, and when Slayer came on the moshheads surged forward and suddenly we were standing in the middle of the Slayer mosh pit. It was nuts. We moshed our way to the edge and hid behind a big Russian dude that was guarding his girlfriend. We hung out at the edge, pushing people that wanted to be pushed, and it was a grand ol’ time.
We were so pumped up after all that that we tried to push even further forward between sets so we could be closer for Metallica. I knew this was a bad idea, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. So we waited, and at one point were curious about how many people were behind us.
Incidentally, we got tickets to the “Golden Circle,” which means the front VIP section. (Why go to Poland for a concert and stand in the back?) Thus we were about 10 people back from the stage when Metallica came on …
…and you *literally* could not see the end of the crowd behind. James Hetfield even commented on it. (We found out afterwards there were 81,000 people at the concert.)
Anyway, when Metallica came on I remembered why you DO NOT STAND IN THE FRONT at a big metal concert. The press of people surges forward when the band comes on, and you are squished into everyone around you, can barely breathe, and are constantly off-balance while the crowd surges in various directions around you. It’s impossible to pay attention to the band because you are constantly in fear for your life. Also, the only way out is to climb on people until you are above the crowd, at which point you crowdsurf your way to the front where the security dudes help you down and let you go out to the side. That part is pretty fun, actually. :)
Metallica was much better produced than the other bands, for some reason. The sound quality was amazing and they had a huge video screen behind the stage. I was off to the side of the crowd at this point, and I got this pic when he got close:
Oh hai, James Hetfield.
He put a lot of emphasis on the Big Four and the face that this was the first time they had all played together and this was a historic event and all that. They even had guitar picks with the four bands’ logos, which surprised the hell out of the crowd.
They put on a great show (my first time seeing them, incidentally), and they’re really appreciative of their fans.
After the show we were pumped but sore from standing for 8+ hours, being stomped on, then walking the mile back to the bus, standing for another hour to the train station, and walking 20 minutes back to the hotel.
It was all worth it.
