The gorgeous Albert Hall plays host to tonight’s festivities as a packed crowd eagerly escapes the rain-drenched streets of Manchester for a night of metallic revelry with Apocalyptica.

In charge of warming up the crowd tonight are British heavy metallers The Raven Age. The prominent red and black of the band’s aesthetic is writ large in the staging as the ornate ceiling is bathed in a deep red glow. 

The band’s classic-sounding brand of heavy metal is a great melding of hard-hitting rhythm parts with more tender emotional sections. Ripping guitar solos are featured throughout and the soaring of singer Matt James’s vocals is the perfect remedy for lifting the spirits of a still slightly damp Manchester crowd.

James does an incredible job of engaging with the audience throughout the set and a request for phone lights to be held up during one of the band’s softer tracks sees the entire room illuminated.

The old chapel building of Albert Hall, with its array of stained glass windows lining the walls is a very apt setting for the night’s main event dedicated as it is to the proverbial metal gods that are Metallica.

The venue feels oddly intimate when compared to some of the clips we’ve been seeing from previous shows on the tour but that’s by no means to the show’s detriment. The stripped-back but impeccably designed stage production still packs a punch with the dazzling light show complimenting the music incredibly, dancing back and forth on the beat between imaginative setups to frame the trio in an endless number of interesting ways. The amount of white that illuminates the stage keeps the performance feeling light and inviting in contrast to the often favoured oppressive dark reds and blues of your typical metal show, but this of course is not your typical metal show. The cello-wielding Finnish outfit have always done a great job of standing apart from the crowd with their utterly unique and inventive take on the genre having honed their craft to perfection with nearly 30 years of experience to back it up. The new release Plays Metallica, Vol. 2 is just a further showcase of their talent as well as a love letter to their musical influences and to their own origins as a band. Metallica having this time round presented the trio with the honour of using the original Cliff Burton bass tracks in the mix should be a testament in itself to Apocalyptica’s dedication and reverence for the material.

The energy on stage is as great as ever with the trio’s expressive playing style on full display. Whether it’s running back and forth across the stage to engage each side of the crowd in another round of cheers or taking centre stage to shred out a solo part, Apocalyptica are rock stars plain and simple.

Usually at this point in our recapping of the evening we might take the chance to highlight a moment or two when a band cracks out a hit to really hype up a crowd but with the format of tonight’s show it feels like a particularly futile exercise as by the very nature of the show the entire setlist consists only of “the hits.” Nevertheless, the group start with a bang hitting us early doors with a 1-2-3 of back-to-back bangers in “Enter Sandman,” “Creeping Death,” and “For Whom The Bell Tolls.” Even the much-derided “St Anger” is met with a loud enthusiastic cheer from the crowd as the new arrangement highlights all the fantastic elements of the song, the quieter sections lent an extra weight as bows gracefully glide over strings heighting the emotions already present in the original track.

Another incredible triple header of “Master of Puppets,” “Nothing Else Matters,” and “Seek and Destroy” rounds out the night, and honesty if the house lights came up there and then then the crowd would leave ecstatic, but of course no Metallica show would be complete without the crown jewel of their catalogue which means the encore is reserved for none other than a soaring rendition of “One,” proving an incredibly emotional beat to end the night on.

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WORDS AND PHOTOS BY BILL MAWDSLEY
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