601. Metallica / 2011-12-07: The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA, USA. 2011. 4/5

This is the second of four nights that Metallica played as their 30th Anniversary celebrations, bringing together old band mates and musician friends to have a rocking old time.
All four nights had a similar theme and arrangement, though with different songs and guests.

Each night started with an instrumental, and the second night was the first time ever that "To Live Is to Die", was played live, the brilliant instrumental from ... And Justice For All which is the last recorded material with Cliff Burton's name on the writing credits. It was a wonderful way to start the gig, and perhaps left it far too much to live up to following it.
We are again then presented with an assortment of the back catalogue - the ever present crowd favourite "Enter Sandman", the great and under-utilised "Holier Than Thou", the awesome "Disposable Heroes", "Bleeding Me", "Wasting My Hate" and "My Apocalypse".

Then came the "new song" of the night, one of the four songs that had come from the Death Magnetic sessions but not made the cut for the album. All four were later released on the Beyond Magnetic EP. Tonight's addition was "Just A Bullet Away", which is okay, but shows why it didn't make the cut initially.

From here we move into the 'special guests' stage of the evening. First was another member of Metallica's 'MetClub' fan club, Andrew Dowis, who came up to play on "Breadfan". Again, how lucky is this bastard. This was followed by "The Memory Remains" with Marianne Faithfull, who provided supporting vocals on the song on the album Reload, followed by a great version of Sweet Savage's "Killing Time" featuring the band's lead vocalist and bass player Ray Haller.
Then band then rolled out "Turn the Page", a Bob Seger song that Metallica covered for Garage Inc. and then spent eleven weeks at #1 in the US. This was sung by Kid Rock, who has also covered the song, and sung it with Metallica in the past. After this, John Bush (whose band Armored Saint had played earlier as support) came out and crushed a version of "The Four Horsemen", bringing the house down.

The next set of songs brought Lou Reed onto stage, to perform three songs from the collabarative album that he and Metallica had released earlier in 2011, Lulu. It had been a controversial move, and the album that was the result of this was panned. Those that like the album will enjoy this. I do not, and really don't.

Jason Newsted came out for the second evening in a row, and helped to return the set to the heights it should be at with blistering versions of "Creeping Death" and "Battery".
The pinnacle of the night came with the original member of Mercyful Fate coming out to perform Metallica's tribute to the band released on Garage Inc., titled "Mercyful Fate", which contains the songs "Satan's Fall", "Curse of the Pharaohs", "A Corpse Without Soul", "Into the Coven" and "Evil". Just awesome.

The evening finished with an all-star jam, everyone from the night coming together to play the party encore, "Seek & Destroy".

Though not as terrific overall as the first night, this still has enough interesting moments to fill a couple of listens.