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Despite 30 odd years of history, rock gigs still have a lots to learn - after queueing for half an hour, getting searched for liquor and frisked for knives I was finally let in to the vast hangar that is the queens wharf event centre. And to what? stand around for about an hour listening to a black sabbath compilation.

Nothing against sabbath, but sounded like a lazy soundman copping out, or a promoter who's never heard of djs. seems this time could have used better to set the sceene, some nice ambience, sound and light wise (as opposed to hard halogens) would have given a bit more style to the event. not that the punters noticed, or had any style. but hey, subconsciously it would have been a nice mood enhancer...

None the less, pretty soon the metal up your ass boys sauntered on to stage pretty casually and belted out a track off their new album under the halogens before kicking in to deep, dark lighting and Master of Puppets on cylinders... it pretty quickly came clear that they were going to severely fucking rock. Throughtout the gig, they managed to make the four thousand strong event feel like it had the intimacy of a club event...

Running through a swath of old and new tracks, with full pyrotechnic accompanyment, powering through a medely of tracks off ride the lightning, a bunch of new stuff... with a teasing intro to sanitaruim, and punctuated with guitar solos via kirk (definately in rockky bendy mode) they pulled back on to a slower break in the set... every now and then, james hetfield (the main man, the teeth he flashes when he smiles you could see all the way from the back!) said a big friendly hi to the audience, yeah fucking wellington do you want it heavy! we're going to fucking give you heavy!

Guns and shellfire with massive pyro explosions and rockets signalled the start of their epic One, whipping the bogans and myself into a frenzy... don't quite know what they made of me grooving out techstep style to double kiks and open e strings... these two huge rastas were having a boogie too, the three of us grooving down amongst all these staunch kids with their arme folded, too scared to make eye contact, and jason newstead bellowing out the final lyrics to One... a good set of lungs inside that kid.

Wandering off stage leaving us in a darkened out hangar for a few minutes... they returned with acoustic guitars and a mini drum kit... james saying they were taking a change of pace, but if you know any of the words, sing along... in to a stream of numbers off kill em all... a nice ballardic rendition of motorbreath and more... a nice mellow break before hammering things home with battery... four very genuinely happy guys thanked us, saying how much of a wicked time they'd had... throwing picks and drumsticks out to the crowd... and the especially nice lars blowing his nose on a towel before handing it to someone up front...