Lean & heavy

Metallica ply their smart sonic savagery at the FleetCenter

by Ted Drozdowski

The driver of the cab I took to Metallica's Tuesday concert at the FleetCenter was a 40ish Polish immigrant, and when he found where I was headed, he told me his own Metallica tale. In his last job, as part of a fishing crew that worked with 15 to 20 miles of hooked line at a time, he was one of the men who had to straighten and recondition the line as it was being hauled in at high speed.

"The work is very repetitious and very fast," he said, "so music is essential. Metallica . . . it was perfect. And I really like it, too, I think they're a good band."

I don't know if there's a lesson there, other than putting the lie to the idea that music is an art- or entertainment-only proposition. But there is something beautiful about imagining workers knee-deep in fish guts out in the chilly Baltic blasting the anthemic "Enter Sandman" or the teeth-gritting "Master of Puppets" for miles over the waves.

As it was on Tuesday, we settled for being blasted in our seats. Metallica had buttressed the arena with suspended rings of speakers, outlining the shape of their interrupted figure-eight stage below. The fiery belches of their pyrotechnic show, made especially hair-raising this year by an encore stunt in which a faked equipment accident results in a flaming "stagehand," were such stuff as Beavis and Butt-head once dreamed of before some kid set his cat on fire and they caught hell.

But it was the music -- from the speed demonics of "So What" to the heavy pneumatic thump-and-grind of "Sad But True" and the acid sting of "Ain't My Bitch," an opening troika that spanned the group's entire range in 15 minutes -- that was the meat of the matter. And it's the music that's kept the band on a steady course through the hoopla that came with selling well over 20 million copies of their last two CDs (1991's Metallica and last year's Load) and becoming one of the world's half-dozen biggest rock groups. Indeed, when singer/guitarist James Hetfield led the crowd in a chant of "I don't give a shit!" before launching "Ain't My Bitch," he could have been addressing the Arkansas cops who've dragged the band's music into a teenage murder case, using it to impugn the character of the accused, who happen to be Metallica fans; or he could have been lashing at the music press, which seems lately more fixated on the details of the groundbreaking contract Metallica have negotiated with their longtime label, Elektra, which insiders say gives the band complete creative control and an unprecedented 50/50 cost-and-profit partnership in the production and sales of albums and videos.

Instead, Hetfield was just revving up the crowd in old-style arena-rock fashion. And in some ways, with its crane lighting and fireflashes, this was an old-style arena-rock show. But what kept separating Metallica from cliché was their songs, which in concert reflected the 15-year-old San Francisco band's three eras. Songs like "Creeping Death" and "Master of Puppets" represented their first phase in a blur of chords and notes played so quickly they faded into a monolith of decibels, Hetfield's voice barking out lyrics about alienation and mind control over the top. These songs are the stuff that in the early mid '80s transformed heavy metal's bloated carcass into a sleek beast driven by wit and the energy of punk.

Then there were the mid-period tunes, late-'80s numbers like "One," an anti-war horror story inspired by Dalton Trumbo's novel Johnny Got His Gun, and "Sad But True," their observation of the effects of deceit and manipulation, which upped Metallica's intensity level by sharpening their lyrics over complex rhythmic changes. Technically, it was their art-rock period, but only those who could hear past the volume and intensity noticed.

When you heard these songs live, it became apparent how Metallica have yet to reap credit for paving the way to the mainstream for the industrial rock of groups like Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, and Marilyn Manson. With their early albums and relentlessly churning, thunderous '80s performances, Metallica made sonic savagery a part of modern life's soundtrack. "I think a lot of musicians didn't realize that those levels of extremity could be reached until we came out," lead guitarist Kirk Hammett told me when we spoke this past fall. "We opened up a realm of possibility with our first three albums. Even for the grunge thing. I remember Kurt Cobain saying Ride the Lightning was one of his favorite albums because it `wasn't stupid.' Our music mirrors modern life as much as Motown's mirrored the romance of falling in love. It says, `You're being manipulated, man, by the big corporations, by the media.' "

Now in their third phase, Metallica are a high-profit corporation unto themselves. But live, the songs from their last two CDs still played as rebel music. Especially "King Nothing," "Ain't My Bitch," and "Hero of the Day," which Hetfield sang splay-legged, his words taking the piss out of the dishonesty and expectations our society imposes with a clean and melodic bent that's now taken them to the top of rock's heap. And his band driving the point home with a guitar/bass/drums attack rooted in the histrionics of heavy and dark, but pared down to a slower, clear-headed fighting speed -- lean and ready for the future.