Metallica Concert in Ottawa

5 November 2009By Zhu 14 Comments

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”.