“Are you feeling good out there?” Metallica frontman James Hetfield asked from the stage on Friday night.
He was immediately greeted with tens of thousands of voices, all screaming back in the affirmative that, yes, people were feeling mighty good.
“Well, knock it off,” the vocalist-guitarist replied back in jest.
Sorry, James, but that was one directive fans definitely weren’t going to follow. These metalheads were in the mood to party and sing along as Metallica performed the first of its two headlining sets during the 2021 Aftershock Festival in Sacramento’s Discovery Park.
The group — which ranks as the best-selling Bay Area band of all time — sounded terrific as it ran through 16 songs in just around two hours. Metallica drew heavily from its classic ’80s and ’90s albums, with one notable exception that we’ll address later.
In all, it was a great way to bring the first full day of Aftershock action to a close on Friday. (The festival actually began on Thursday, but it was a lighter — though no less appealing — lineup with Anthrax, Testament and Exodus among the acts scheduled to take the stage.)
Metallica returns on Sunday to perform its second headlining set, putting a bow on what is shaping up to be a tremendously successful festival.
While some festivals try to be everything to everybody, booking a diverse lineup meant to appeal to the broadest amount of listeners, Aftershock goes the other direction and keeps a tight focus on all things heavy — mostly metal and hard rock, sprinkled with a bit of punk and hip-hop. In that sense, it’s a niche festival, but one that is also able to draw 30,000-plus fans per day.
Over the years, it’s become the place to be for headbangers, annually offering up the best that these heavy music genres have to offer.
And that’s certainly again the case in 2021.
Friday’s lineup was terrific, with theatrical Swedish metal troupe Avatar and Bay Area ska-punk band Rancid among the standout acts. The best of the pre-Metallica bunch, however, was Danish act Volbeat, which convincingly mixed American heartland rock and classic metal sounds in ways that had me wondering what might happen if John Mellencamp fronted Iron Maiden.
Yet, despite all the interesting acts on the bill, fans definitely seemed to be counting down the hours (then minutes, then seconds) until Metallica took the stage.
It was the band’s first major NorCal show since it performed the opening concerts for the Golden State Warriors’ Chase Center in san Francisco back in September 2019 — although the group did perform an intimate warm-up gig for a few hundred extremely lucky fans last month at the Independent club in San Francisco.
Metallica returns to Chase Center on Dec. 17 and 19 to celebrate its 40th anniversary as a band. The group is also currently celebrating the 30th anniversary of its best-selling album — the 1991 eponymous outing that is commonly referred to as “The Black Album.”
The foursome — Hetfield, drummer Lars Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo — certainly didn’t sound like a group that had gone basically two years without playing a show in front of an in-person audience. Instead, they had no problem rekindling that old Metallica magic as they rocked through such fan favorites as “The Memory Remains,” “One” and “Fade to Black.”
“It’s so good to be up here and doing what we’re supposed to do,” Hetfield said.
None of the songs in the 16-song set hailed from “The Black Album,” which seems especially noteworthy given the album’s milestone anniversary. That means they skipped over such usual concert staples as “Sad but True,” “Nothing Else Mattters” and — oh, wow — even “Enter Sandman.” Fans definitely aren’t use to hearing that kind of a setlist from Metallica.
Hmm. I wonder what that means for the band’s headlining set on Sunday at Aftershock. (Actually, I feel like I have a pretty good hunch. And, if I’m right, fans are going to really dig it.)
The festival was set to continue on Saturday with the likes of the Original Misfits, the Offspring, Machine Gun Kelly (who plays the Bill Graham Civic in San Francisco Sunday) and, best of all, Gojira.
Aftershock closes on Sunday with a lineup that includes Mammoth WVH, Social Distortion, In This Moment and, of course, a second helping of mighty Metallica.
