You don't need to know this, but recently someone upset me. I felt small and stupid and inadequate for a while and then I just got angry. So - a small part of me is still a little bruised on the night I go to see Metallica at the 02 Arena, and when I hear Broken, Beat and Scarred a third of the way in, it feel as if it is being played especially for me.
 
It's rather a teenage notion of course but every time James Hetfield barks "You rise.. You fall.. You're down, then you rise again / What don't kill ya will make you more strong", accompanied by 20,000 fists pumping the air, that bruised part inside me sits up and sticks a big two fingers up at my tormentor. And that is why I had been so excited about this show for months beforehand: this band - who are on top of their game again after a ludicrous and laughable few years when it all threatened to come crashing down around their ears - are so mighty and vociferous that even though I am 33, they can make me feel exactly as I did when I was seventeen, when I thought anything was possible.
 
Life is more complicated now than it was then, but although I am 33 and have nine bank accounts (I counted) - five of which are empty - I do still have a seventeen year-old metalhead living somewhere inside. I first saw Metallica when they played the Milton Keynes Bowl in 1993, and I remember my father said to me that these big enormodome concerts were never as good as small, intimate shows. He had a point, but there's also something thrilling about walking into the 02 Arena and taking in all of its corporate massiveness as Metallifans mill about, wandering in and out of bars and playing the soon-to-be-released Metallica version of the Guitar Hero console game.
 
The show is played in the round, the band - bar Lars Ulrich, sitting on a raised platform with a daft rotating drumkit - leaping about with an athleticism that belies their advancing years. James Hetfield, lean and lithe, growls at all four corners of the stage, and in the centre, surrounded by pyrotechnic displays so intense you can feel the heat of the flames on your face even from the circle seats. The set plunders Metallica's first - and best - four albums as well as last year's return to form, Death Magnetic; the newer songs fast, vigorous, emphatic.

That Was Just Your Life is a furious opener, green lasers darting furiously about the stage as the band stride on in the dark, pounding out that first song and rushing headlong into The End Of The Line. Somewhat predictably - but you forgive them for it - it is One that first ushers in the flames, which shoot up through various holes in the stage floor, making it look like a battleground, Hetfield standing on a platform in the middle like a soldier surveying the damage around him.

New material is greeted with enthusiasm - it's as if the St Anger era never happened because these songs blend seamlessly with the older stuff, although as you'd expect, the songs from the first four albums are the ones that get the biggest response. There's a fervour that grips the arena and it is contagious, mesmeric, all-consuming: these are songs you can wade right into and become a part of. And it's funny how, even though I've not listened to The Black Album all the way through for a good while, I suddenly realise I know all the words to Sad But True, and singing along feels so cathartic. It's only very special bands, I think, that can create moments like these, when you just  forget about things or people that may be bothering you and you're on top of the world again. They should bottle this and sell it (perhaps not as a perfume, mind).

A hefty set of an hour and three quarters concludes with a trio of older songs - the fast, take-no-prisoners Damage Inc; Nothing Else Matters and, of course, Enter Sandman. And then the band depart, excecpt they don't because this is a massive venue and they're right in the middle of it, so instead they skulk in the corners of the stage for a while before coming back on for an encore that threatens never to end, extending the show to around the two hour mark. The only tragedy in all of this is that the 02 is not the most central of London venues and a few folk - your correspondent included - have to slip away during final song Seek and Destroy in order to make the last train home.

But what a show. It takes a certain amount of strength to churn out a series of sub-par albums, be the subject of a movie that makes you look ridiculous and then come out of the wringer a few years later as blistering and mesmeric as when you first started out. Metallica have that strength in abundance and their light isn't showing any signs of dimming just yet: they return to London next month and if you've any interest in proper, boot-stirring metal you really should go. Especially if you're angry with someone.

Photos by Sophie Garrett: www.flickr.com/photos/sophigarrett/

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