Metallica mayhem

Even with muddled vocals from lead singer James Hetfield, Metallica could do no wrong with the Ontario audience at the Citizens Business Bank Arena Friday night. 

The band used a multi-colored laser light show to start the show and didn't let up with loud flames, lighted-up coffins and red and green lights that popped up out the stage floor, which was in the center of the arena.

The first song was the eerie heartbeat from Death Magnetic's "That Was Just Your Life" before the guitars and Hetfeld's muddied vocals kicked in. Then the group went into the second song from the album ""The End of the Line."

Metallica's individual members looked to be having one of the best times of their life ... Hetfield constantly wore a sneering smile, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, kept raising his arms to the adoring crowd, drummer Lars Ulrich kept getting off his drum set to talk to the fans in the front row or playfully throw water at them and bassist Robert Trujillo would kneel down and show his bass (and playing skills) to the fans in the closest rows.

Hetfield kept talking about how "Metallica loves Ontario" toward the end of the encore (which included balloons being dropped from the Ontario rafters and the explosive "Whiplash" and "Seek & Destroy." The band actually seemed to be enjoying the concert as they energetically walked the stage back and forth and after the concert ended they spent an extended period of time throwing out picks and Ulrich even gave away his drum sticks.

Fans were equally into Metallica and many of them pumped their fists, yelled or raised their arms the entire set. There were mosh pits continuously started on both sides of the stage with people happily shoving, getting shoved or running into other people.

Most of the crowd appeared to show up midway through Metallica's set because there were pockets of empty seats in the arena, which was sold out with more than 10,000 people.

In the mosh pit on the left side of the stage, noisy firecrackers were thrown down a couple of times during Metallica's set (and during second band Lamb of God). Somewhat surprisingly, no security appeared to go and check it out.

One fan even jumped on stage toward the end of Metallica's encore and appeared to take a guitar but security tackled him and got the guitar.

Lamb of God and The Sword were strong openers but their lead singer's vocals (from Lamb of God's Randy Blythe and The Sword's  John "J. D." Cronise) were worse than Metallica's and nearly inaudible.

- Wes Woods II wes.woods@inlandnewspapers.com