How to release frus­tra­tions after a hard day at work? Head to a heavy metal concert!

You hadn’t pic­tured me as a met­al­head, had you? Well, I’m not usu­ally into heavy metal but I love Metal­lica. I had heard the band was great live and I couldn’t wait to attend the con­cert in Ottawa.

Unfor­tu­nately, what was bound to hap­pen hap­pened. I was searched upon enter­ing the arena and couldn’t go in with my beloved cam­era. Fear not: I’m so addicted to pho­tog­ra­phy that I still man­aged to sneak out a smaller dig­i­tal cam­era — ah! Don’t expect DSLR qual­ity pic­tures this time, but I’m still quite happy with the result. Think of it as pho­to­jour­nal­ism: report­ing live (well, a day later) from the mosh pit!

One of the best parts of the con­cert was def­i­nitely the crowd. Metal fans are loud, fun and take their con­certs seri­ously. Yet, because they are Cana­di­ans, they are polite and don’t go into knife fights in the mosh pit. Love them. The two guys in front of us, for exam­ple, pre­pared their seats before the show: they went back-and-forth to the bar and lined up 15 cups of beer on the floor, at their feet. Drunk them all, trust me. I actu­ally had to wash all of the clothes I was wear­ing because I could smell beer, even though I didn’t drink anything!

The music was awe­some: the band is def­i­nitely worth see­ing live. They inter­act quite a lot with the crowd and they were quite funny — in a dark metal kind of way. This is the kind of con­cert where you can’t help pump­ing your first in the air, throw­ing the devil horns and scream­ing “noth­ing else mat­ter”.

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