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January 6, 2017

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After a long wait, Metallica makes return to Shanghai

WHEN multi-platinum heavy metal band Metallica rocked their first China concert in Shanghai four years ago, fans and musicians flew in from all over the country, and the band promised to return. They will, in Shanghai on January 15 and in Beijing for the first time on January 17. They will also be playing in Seoul, Hong Kong and Singapore.

“We have always had intentions of playing in China. Now that we have had that invitation and broken the ice, China’s gonna be a pretty regular stop for us,” Kirk Hammett, the band’s lead guitarist, tells Shanghai Daily in an e-mail interview.

“We are really looking forward to playing in Beijing. Whenever we go to a new place, we try not to have too many expectations. It’s wise to just go there and see how it is and just go from there.”

Last time, the band was surprised by how excited the Chinese fans got, as they thought Chinese might be shy. “It was more than a concert for me and my friends,” says 43-year-old Yang Zewei, a corporate executive who went to the 2013 concert and has bought tickets this time, too.

“When I was in university in the 1990s, we didn’t have that many ways to listen to foreign bands. Bands like Metallica, Nirvana and Guns N’ Roses were like the introduction to rock for everyone. When I saw them playing on the stage here in Shanghai, 30 years later, it felt so surreal.”

Founded in 1981, the American band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009, and for three decades before their first China concert, Metallica was one of the few names that influenced generations of Chinese rock fans because they were among the first into China, although not formally.

In the 1980s and 1990s, many young Chinese got into rock music from cassettes sold on streets — cassettes that were confiscated and punched by customs. Yang still remembers how he asked the street vendor to save Metallica cassettes for him and how everyone was trying to borrow from him.

The concert is part of the band’s WorldWired Tour that started just before they released their long-awaited 11th studio album “Hardwired … to Self-Destruct.”

“Every time we record an album, it’s a different experience,” Hammett says. “A lot that has to do with the songs, a lot has to do with how we play our instruments, at that point of time.”

 

Metallica Worldwired Tour 2017

Date: January 15, 8pm

Venue: Mercedes-Benz Arena, 1200 Expo Ave, Pudong

Tickets: 480-1,980 yuan

To buy tickets, call 4006-103-721 or go to Damai.cn.




 

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