Sorry to break up the geography discussion.
So I saw S&M2 last night and....yea, I dunno.
Parts of it were fantastic. Unforgiven 3 is not a song I like, but this version was fantastic. Same with The Day that Never Comes. Hate that song, but really liked this version. The two orchestral pieces were lovely as well. Anesthesia was just mind blowing to be honest, and I expected to be bored.
Some other moments too, but a lot of the others just felt........I dunno. It's hard to name my criticism because none of them apply to the WHOLE show, but to enough of it to tarnish it for me. So, here are the issues, with the caveat that none of them are meant to be 100% and there are plenty of exceptions.
- Lars..........I dunno man. His beats are fine enough, but his fills are often SO out of time that it's actually jarring and I start tapping my foot to see just how much he's speeding up some of those fills. Kudos to the band who can flawlessly keep up with him though. A lesser band would fall apart immediately.
- Kirk........jesus. His rhythm playing is good, but his solos were SO bad on this. Way out of time, sloppy as all hell, just.....bad. This might be one of the worst Kirk performances (lead wise) that I've ever seen/heard.
- The mix seemed odd. Sometimes good, but most of the time it felt like they mixed it solely as a Metallica show and then remembered there was an orchestra and just kind of lazily added it in...at times. On the original S&M, while the guitars were too low, I could always hear all of the very cool the orchestra was doing. On this, the band was mixed amazingly, but I could see the orchestra doing cool stuff but only heard some chords and high end melodies. Hopefully the eventual Blu Ray will be improved on that end.
- Playing wise, a lot of it, definitely not all, but a considerable amount felt like Metallica just played a typical show. On the original S&M it was a special event. Their playing was special. Some of the songs had adjustments made to make best use of the orchestra. But this? Like I said, some exceptions, but the band just did their thing and the orchestra was also there. On No Leaf Clover, when the band play it live now, Kirk plays a few of the orchestra pieces on lead, which makes sense.....BUT HE DID IT HERE TOO! WHY?!?! THE ORCHESTRA IS RIGHT THERE!
- Eh, I dunno. Probably more, but I'm torn. No where near as amazing as S&M, but still fun and worth watching.