METALLICA performed its top-selling 1991 LP, “Metallica”, a.k.a. “the black album,” in its entirety for the first time ever this past Monday night (May 7) at the opening show of the band’s European tour at Synot Tip Arena in Prague, Czech Republic. The band played the LP backwards, starting with closing number “The Struggle Within” and ending with “Enter Sandman”.
The group’s setlist was as follows:
01. Hit The Lights
02. Master Of Puppets
03. The Shortest Straw
04. For Whom The Bell Tolls
05. Blackened
06. The Struggle Within
07. My Friend Of Misery
08. The God That Failed
09. Of Wolf & Man
10. Nothing Else Matters
11. Through The Never
12. Don’t Tread On Me
13. Wherever I May Roam
14. The Unforgiven
15. Holier Than Thou
16. Sad But True
17. Enter Sandman
Encore:
18. Fuel
19. One
20. Seek & Destroy
Fan-filmed video footage of the entire concert can be seen below.
Asked why METALLICA decided to play the “black” album in its entirety on the current tour, the band’s drummer, Lars Ulrich, told Kerrang! magazine, “The people at [the U.K.’s] Download [festival] asked. It wasn’t our idea.”
He added, “The thing is, although we haven’t played at Donington for six years, we have been to the U.K. pretty much every single summer since then. So they wanted us to do something different, and that’s what they came up with. I quite like the fact that come [this] summer it’ll be the 21st anniversary of the ‘black album,’ not the 20th.”
Asked whether he and his bandmates would have to re-learn the two songs from the record — “Don’t Tread On Me” and “The Struggle Within” — that METALLICA had never played live before, Lars said, “Yeah. Although to be honest with you, a song like ‘The Struggle Within’ is a lot easier to re-learn than ‘The Frayed Ends Of Sanity’.” He added, “I don’t think it’s going to be too difficult for us to figure out these songs.”
During a recent interview with Spin, Lars was asked which METALLICA song he would take back if he could. “‘Don’t Tread On Me’ has that shuffle vibe,” Lars replied. “That’s not my thing, but I don’t wish to erase it from all 97 bazillion copies of the ‘black’ album.”
METALLICA will play the complete “black album” at its own Orion Music + More festival, scheduled for June 23-24 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. METALLICA is headlining both days and will perform its entire 1984 album “Ride The Lightning” for the first time ever on the other day of the festival.
“Metallica” in 2009 surpassed SHANIA TWAIN’s 1997 record, “Come On Over”, as the best-selling CD of the SoundScan era. To date, the black album has sold 15,772,000 copies in the United States.
Although METALLICA had scored their first radio and video airplay with their previous effort, 1988’s “…And Justice For All”, the black album was the band’s biggest commercial breakthrough, producing five singles and making them into one of the most popular rock bands in the world.