Hero of the Day

Jump to October 28th, 2011

DELHI, WE ARE METALLICAAAAA!!! As James Hetfield in his trademark, ever enchanting scream addresses the thousands of rock fans gathered for a worship well deserved at both ends. The setting couldn’t be more apt. The winter mist looms against the backdrop of lights, show and the ‘four horsemen’.

How big is this? Well if you’re a true rock fan, it’s blasphemy even to make an attempt to answer such a question. Sometimes gravity cannot be explained, it just needs to be experienced. So I’ll obviously keep it at that. There’ll be many though who would be attending because well

1. they have heard of a Metallica song , the ubiquitous Nothing Else Matters at some happening joints in the city
2. an international act is performing in our Sadi Dilli, or,
3. because it’ll be ‘not so cool’ to be left out from the most talked about event of the month, or
4. simply because Sunny and Bunty from the neighbourhood are also going.

Most of the young students and urban professionals of India’s english music following population did start with the likes of Bryan Adams [ Delhi’s missed out on this, ‘Sad but True’ ] and Michael Jackson, and then maybe moved onto bands like Bon jovi, RHCP and Guns and Roses. The next step was vital and defining though.
Metallica is like a band, pun intended, which separates the religious metal and rock listeners from the alternative ones, quite distinctively at that. If it gets into your blood it’s like the perfect launch pad for more great music and opens up into the spectacular world of Iron Maiden, Slayer, Slipknot and the list continues. Metallica seemed like a bridge to me, perfect, a threshold, a brilliant one, for the next level.

After live concerts of Roger Waters and Iron Maiden in India, this is definitely the 3rd most significant concert for us. It would have been a dream come true if Jason Newsted could have been witnessed too, with his powering bass lines, but then we would make do with Robert. After headbanging on their audio files a million times over, gaping in awe at their concert DVD’s and S&M performances, and singing in tandem at rock pubs all over India, this is pure Salvation, closest we can get to it, and no one’s complaining.

I can’t wait for that unnamed feeling, of those almost synchronized movement of heads to Lars’ thundering drum beats or thousands gripped by insanity air guitar-ing along with Hammet’s riffs and a loud vocal of Hetfield’s ‘Seek and Destroy’ seeming like a Dolby Surround sound in open air. There will be many a beautiful evening in Delhi this winter, but this one will be Special, Time will March On this October evening and rightly so.

I will be there, and am sure many of you, my metal head friends will be too, celebrating while our heroes take us through a trip. I will feel like the ‘Hero of the Day’ and am sure each one of you will too. Metallica maketh our Dream come True…finally…

Getting lost within myself
Nothing matters, no one else
There is nothing more for me
Need the end to set me free