Metallica @ The Ent Centre, November ’10

Metallica have one of the biggest stage performances in live music today.

Their stage/lighting setup alone requires 20 semi-trailers to move it between cities, plus who knows how many trucks for instruments, then there is the entourage of personnel – Metallica have their own set stage security.

A unique “stage-in-the-round” layout for the Death Magnetic tour means the band can switch between facing any direction during songs, therefore at some point during the show face every angle of crowd. Priceless for those punters who were at the “back” of the Ent Centre tonight.

For us photographers this means moving right the way around the rectangular photo pit, following the guys on stage as they front up to any mic of their choosing – no easy task when there are 8 photogs, plus Metallica’s in house photog all trying to get their shots.

All told, photographing Metallica was an incredible experience and choosing 10 shots to showcase all that went down was no easy task!

I’ll leave any talk of tonight’s setlist to the hardcore fans, however with such a vast backlog of material to choose from, it would be difficult to cover everyone’s ideal Metallica tracks. For me, I think we got a good mix of old and new the highlights being Fade To Black and Master Of Puppets.

Catching James Hetfield having lunch with a mate at The Strand the next day I didn’t let the chance for some heavy (pun intended) networking slip me past: I made a quick introduction, explained I photographed their show the night before and if he would like to see the pics here’s my card. I think it highly unlikely he would bother scoping here, but if you are reading this James, it was a pleasure to photograph you and the rest of the band last night. Thanks for putting on a killer show with some of the best lighting I’ve ever photographed.