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Metallica rocks Glastonbury

Metallica rocked Glastonbury on Saturday night (June 28), confounding critics who said heavy metal had no place at Britain’s biggest music festival.

After opening with “Creeping Death” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” front man James Hetfield said they were representing“the heavier side of music” at the festival held on a farm in rural southwest England.

Both fans and newcomers to metal enthusiastically welcomed songs like “One” and “Enter Sandman” in the Pyramid Stage performance.
 

 Kirk Hammett of US metal band Metallica performs on the Pyramid Stage, on the second day of the Glastonbury Festival of Music and Performing Arts on Worthy Farm in Somerset, south west England, on June 28, 2014

 Kirk Hammett of US metal band Metallica performs on  the second day of the Glastonbury Festival on June 28. Photo: AFP

The choice of the US group, which has sold more than 120 million records, for the prestigious Saturday headline slot had been controversial.

Some of the 135,000 festival goers complained that their music did not fit into Glastonbury’s hippy ethos. Others said Hetfield’s narration of a TV show about bear hunting did not fit the event’s environmental culture.

Hetfield answered both counts in the one hour 40 minutes performance. He said all types of music were represented at Glastonbury, “so why not heavy rock.”

And a film at the start of the performance took a humorous swipe at the hunting controversy.

It showed a traditional English fox hunt ending with the red-jacketed huntsmen being shot by bears, revealed to be the members of Metallica in costume.

 Lars Ulrich of US metal band Metallica performs on the Pyramid Stage, on the second day of the Glastonbury Festival of Music and Performing Arts on Worthy Farm in Somerset, south west England, on June 28, 2014.

 Lars Ulrich of US metal band Metallica onstage at the Gastonbury Festival. Photo: AFP

Source: Reuters