Metallica at Rogers Arena

There’s no newMetallica album on the horizon for at least a couple of years, and it’s a safe bet the thrash pioneers aren’t hurting for cash. So why embark on an epic tour now? Why, for you, the Metallica fan, of course! Or maybe it’s laying the groundwork for when that new LP does come out in 2014, at which point the band would rather have your most recent memory of it be of that totally fucking awesome concert they played in 2012, rather than that putrid Lulu disc it shat out the year before. And “totally fucking awesome” pretty well sums up advance word from the current tour. Metallica is playing in the round, blasting through all of its biggest hits, and delivering a spectacle that includes fire, larger-than-life re-creations of classic album covers, fire, lasers, and fire. Also, fire. When Metallica plays Rogers Arena on Friday and Saturday (August 24 and 25), it will do so with Vancouver’s own 3 Inches of Blood kicking things off. That’s pretty sweet, but the best part of the whole thing? Metallica’s set list for the tour reportedly doesn’t include a single song from St. Anger.