LINE-UPS
James Hetfield
(vocals/guitar)
Kirk Hammett (guitar)
Robert Trujillo (bass)
Lars Ulrich (drums) |
METALLICA's January
2004 single, 'The Unnamed Feeling', featured a whole crop
of classic tracks recorded in Paris the year before. The
band, unveiling a lengthy second run of North American
dates, won a prestigious Grammy Award in the "Best
Metal Performance" category for 'St. Anger' at the
46th annual show held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
Meantime, Rolling Stone magazine would place METALLICA
as the fifth highest Rock n' Roll earner in North America
for 2003, reckoning their 'Summer Sanitarium' tour had
grossed close to $50 million. Behind the scenes, the band
would benefit from a shake up of the Warner Bros. recording
stable, shifting from long term imprint Elektra over to
Warner Bros. for future product.
North American
touring in the first half of 2004 had the band packaged
with support band GODSMACK, these dates grossing a cool
$22 million. As the world tour rolled into Europe and
Scandinavia the band not only sustained but strengthened
their appeal. Quite incredibly, METALLICA's concert at
the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki, Finland on 28th May was
attended by 46,000 people, close to 1 percent of the country's
5.5-million population. This huge wave of support was
translated to the national Finnish album charts where
no less than six METALLICA albums occupied the top forty
-'Metallica' at no. 4, 'Master Of Puppets' no. 7, '...And
Justice For All' no. 11, 'Ride The Lightning' no. 14,
'Kill 'Em All' no. 10 and 'St. Anger' at no. 28.
METALLICA fared
even better in Sweden where the band's gig in Gothenburg
on 30th May propelled their back catalogue into the official
national album listings again with 'Metallica' re-entering
at no. 9, 'Master Of Puppets' at no. 14, '...and Justice
For All' at no. 20, 'Ride The Lightning' at no. 23, 'Kill
'em All' at no. 28, 'St. Anger' at no. 31, 'Load' at no.
47, 'Reload' at no. 48, 'S&M' at no. 54 and 'Garage
Inc.' at no. 60.
The group's 4th
June 'Rock
In Rio' festival performance in Lisbon, Portugal would
broadcast live to more than 45 countries via several television
channels.
Lars Ulrich was
hospitalized just upfront of the band's headlining slot
at the mammoth 'Download' festival in England on 6th June.
Apparently the drummer had been taken ill while travelling
in a private plane between Lisbon in Portugal and the
UK, the decision being made to divert to Germany where
an ambulance took Ulrich to hospital. Quickfire replacements
were sought in the backstage area of the show with Hetfield,
Hammett and Trujillo jamming with MACHINE HEAD's Dave
McClain, HATEBREED's Matt Byrne and LIFE OF AGONY's Sal
Abruscato among others. However, for a truncated nine
song METALLICA employed Dave Lombardo of SLAYER playing
'Battery' and 'The Four Horsemen', Joey Jordison of SLIPKNOT
covering 'For Whom The Bell Tolls', 'Creeping Death' and
'Creeping Death' and drum tech Fleming Larsen taking on
'Fade to Black'. Jordison returned for 'Wherever I May
Roam', 'Last Caress', 'Sad But True' 'Nothing Else Matters'
and 'Enter Sandman'. Lars Ulrich would be back in his
rightful place for the band's next scheduled gig in Ludwigshafen,
Germany.
Meantime further
acknowledgement of the band's standing poured in as Kirk
Hammett was honored with the 'Outstanding Guitarist' award
at the California Music Awards held on 6th June and the
following day METALLICA scooped the 'Best International
Act' award at the second annual Metal Hammer awards in
London.
A new single,
'Some Kind Of Monster', would be launched in July to capitalise
on the release of the Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky
directed documentary of the same name. This EP, limited
editions coming with a free T shirt, hosted live renditions
of 'The Four Horsemen', 'Damage, Inc.', 'Leper Messiah',
'Motorbreath', 'Ride The Lightning' and 'Hit The Lights',
recorded in Paris on June 11, 2003. Selling just shy of
30,000 copies in its debut week, 'Some Kind Of Monster'
hit no. 37 on the US Billboard charts.
One setback came
in Croatia, a 27th June appearance at Gradski Stadion
in Zagreb being cancelled due to "insurmountable
technical difficulties". METALLICA's show at Prague's
T-Mobile Park on 1st July proved unusual too, the group
taking to the stage an hour early to allow fans to watch
their national soccer team play against Greece in the
Euro 2004 semifinal.
Another METALLICA
tribute would be in the air too as Mexican acoustic duo
Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero, former members
of Heavy Metal band members of TIERRA ACIDA, revealed
plans for a METALLICA covers EP. Their 2004 album 'Live
Manchester and Dublin', recorded in Dublin's Christ Church
Cathedral and the Manchester Academy, included a segue
of 'One' interwoven with the Dave Brubek Jazz standard
'Take 5'. Also on the METALLICA covers front, acts such
as MOTÖRHEAD, FLOTSAM AND JETSAM, DEATH ANGEL and
DARK ANGEL all contributed to the latest tribute album
'Metallic Assault'.
METALLICA's North
American 'Madly In Anger With The World' campaign re-commenced
in St. Paul, Minnesota on 16th August. This show would
also mark the launch of METALLICA's official biographry
'So What: The Good, The Mad, and The Ugly' through Broadway
Books. Fans pre-purchasing the 1000 page tome and picking
up a special wristband would be eligible for a meet and
greet with the band on the day of the concert. Subsequent
gigs saw a shift in song content as the track 'Some Kind
Of Monster' was debuted at a Peoria, Illinois on the 24th.
During this show the band also performed 'Trapped Under
Ice', an exceptionally rare outing for this song. METALLICA
closed out the first leg with a show in Lubbock, Texas,
notable for a set list containing a first time ever live
rendition of 'Sweet Amber'.
The second leg
of the tour maintained the momentum of the first, illustrated
by the fact that tickets for the Montreal Bell Centre
concert on 4th October sold out of its 19,000 tickets
in less than three hours. A further night was duly added
to the itinerary. Canada also scored with the addition
of a second Quebec City Colisée Pepsi concert,
this show added as a fundraiser for CHOI 98.1 FM radio
station, threatened by closure by the CRTC. The first
Quebec show sold all 13,000 tickets in under three hours.
In October METALLICA
provided more fodder for die hard US collectors with the
issue of 'Vinyl Box' which comprised special editions
of its first four studio albums, as well as the 'Garage
Days Re-Revisited' EP and the European 'Creeping Death'
picture disc. Restricted to just 5,000 hand numbered copies
'Vinyl Box' saw the albums 'Kill 'Em All', 'Ride The Lightning',
'Master Of Puppets' and '...And Justice For All' expanded
to double-vinyl sets on 180-gramme audiophile vinyl with
new gatefold jackets.
On 7th September
James Hetfield performed a "metal version" of
WAYLON JENNINGS Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit's Done
Got Out of Hand' during the 'CMT Outlaws' concert taping
at Nashville's Gaylord Entertainment Center. Meanwhile,
back on the METALLICA tour the band maintained their interest
in keeping the live set fluid by performing 'Wasting My
Hate' breaking a seven year break for that song in Quebec
and then performing 'The God That Failed' for the first
time in ten years at the 17th October Washington, D.C.
MCI Center gig. By the time the band had wrapped up the
'Madly in Anger with the World' tour it had grossed a
reported $53.8 million in box office reciepts.
In December the
METALLICA track 'Some Kind Of Monster' would be nominated
in the 'Best Hard Rock Performance' category for the 47th
annual Grammy Awards. May of 2005 saw an announcement
that Kirk Hammett had contributed guest guitar to SANTANA's
'All That I Am' album. That same month the Recording Industry
Association of America revealed METALLICA had sold over
57 million albums in the USA, with only LED ZEPPELIN,
AC/DC and AEROSMITH ranking above them in terms of Hard
Rock sales.
Having kept a
relatively low profile since completing their world tour
in late 2004 the band did enter the studios on 20th September.
Not to record music though, but voice parts for their
character inclusions in 'The Simpsons'. METALLICA returned
to the live stage playing two shows opening up for the
ROLLING STONES in their home city of San Francisco at
the SBC Pacbell Park on 13th and 15th November.
METALLICA's first
announced live work for 2006 broke new territory as the
group headlined three festivals in South Africa during
March, their first visit to the continent. The group put
in shows in Centurion, Durban and Cape Town topping the
'Coca-Cola Colab Massive Mix' bill comprising SIMPLE PLAN,
THE RASMUS, SEETHER, FATBOY SLIM, and COLLECTIVE SOUL.
The group then revealed plans to break off from cutting
a new album in order to hit the summer festival circuit,
confirming headline gigs at Germany's Nurburgring 'Rock
Am Ring' and Nurnberg 'Rock Im Park' festivals and 'Download'
events at Castle Donington in the UK and Dublin in Ireland.
