METALLICA
Sonisphere Festival
Hockenheimring, Hockenheim, Germany
July 4 , 2009

Metallica were again touring Europe on the summer of 2009.
And the weekend of the 4th of July was just the perfect timing to see them: two concerts just a few miles away from home, one in Germany on Saturday, and one in Belgium on Sunday.

We were four friends planning to go by car, so we hit the road, straight to Germany’s Sonisphere Festival in Hockenheim.

As we were getting there I realized that this was my 6th Metallica concert, and each one had been in a different country: Colombia, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria and now Germany.

Know you know why this website is called Metal Traveller!

Hockenheim is a city in Southern Germany known for his automobile racing track: the Hockenheimring.

The Sonisphere Festival was being held there.

It’s a 5-hours drive from home but we left quite late so we missed all other performing bands.

I would have loved to get there earlier and see Anthrax, Down, In Extremo and The Prodigy.


We finally only saw a few songs from Die Toten Hosen. Anyway, we were going there for Metallica.

There were 3 different pits, and we managed to get to the first one.

I didn’t try to get to the first row. Instead, I enjoyed the show on a very large and comfortable space on the back of the first pit.

The intro was as usual The Ecstasy Of Gold, with some images on the giant screens taken from the movie The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

I thought they were going to start with This Was Your Life but no… Instead, Metallica began their show with Fight Fire With Fire!
I don’t need to tell you how euphoric everyone got!

And the second song was… Ride The Lightning.

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

For a moment I thought they were going to play the whole Ride The Lightning album, released 25 years earlier.

Well, this didn’t happen but the setlist included two more songs from it: Fade To Black and a very rare and pleasant Trapped Under Ice.

Metallica loves Germany and they demonstrated it on the World Magnetic Tour, with at least 8 shows played in that country.

The audience in Germany is usually quite calm, but tonight it was clear that tonight everyone at the Sonisphere Festival was there for Metallica. Even if some other good bands played earlier.

The band also gave a great performance.

James, Kirk and Robert fill all the available space, during the whole show they don’t stop moving from side to side of the stage.

Even Lars gets out of his drumkit anytime he can. You have a Metallica member in front of you almost any time.

One of the best moments of the concert was an accelerated and ultra-energetic version of Fuel.

The setlist also included Holier Than Thou, four songs from Death Magnetic (including My Apocalypse) and the classic Master Of Puppets.

James Hetfield was wearing a bullet belt.

Hey, when was the last time you saw a picture of James wearing this thrash metal fashion accessory?
Maybe two decades ago…

After Nothing Else Matters and Enter Sandman, two songs they never skip, the band got backstage and we all kept screaming for more.

So Kirk and Lars came back on stage and played the intro riff of… Michael Jackson’s Beat It!

Metallica covered this song in 2003 for their Mtv Awards performance, as part of a medley.
Hockenheim was the first Metallica concert since Michael Jackson’s death on June 25 2009, so this was their way to honour his memory.

Right after the show we hit the road again, to Belgium. We stopped at a cheap motorway hotel named Formule 1 at about 4am.

We slept for most of the day, and got ready for Metallica again at Rock Werchter Festival…

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Setlist Metallica – Sonisphere Festival, Hockenheim, Germany – July 4, 2009

01. Intro: The Ecstasy Of Gold (from The Good The Bad And The Ulgly)
02. Fight Fire With Fire
03. Ride The Lightning
04. Holier Than Thou
05. Fuel
06. Fade To Black
07. Broken, Beat And Scarred
08. Cyanide
09. Sad But True
10. One
11. All Nightmare Long + Guitar Solo
12. The Day That Never Comes
13. Master Of Puppets
14. My Apocalypse
15. Guitar Solo + Nothing Else Matters
16. Enter Sandman
————————————
17. Beat It (Michael Jackson - Intro riff)
18. Stone Cold Crazy (Queen)
19. Trapped Under Ice
20. Seek And Destroy

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