After his very public brain explosion, and well, subsequent life explosion that followed, Green Day‘s Billie Joe Armstrong and his merry men pulled out of their performance at the upcoming Voodoo Festival. It was devastating news for those holding tickets, for about 5 seconds that is, until their replacement was announced. Queue Enter Sandman intro.
That’s right, Metallica rose to the occasion and accepted to fill in for the punk rock icons’ headlining slot at the October 27 event. That really is something; one of the world’s biggest bands pulls out? No dramas, we’ll replace them with another one of the world’s biggest bands. We just don’t get that here. Now in a recent interview, Kirk Hammett has described the metal gods as ‘honoured’ by the opportunity to full in.
Hammett explained to Fuse (Via Blabbermouth) “We got a message about two days ago asking us if we’re able to fill in for GREEN DAY, because Billie Joe was having some issues. We discussed it between the four of us and we all said, ‘Yeah, it would be a great thing for us to do and it would also be great to help out Billie Joe, ’cause he’s a friend of ours and we love Green Day. If we can help them out in any way possible, we’re always happy to do it, ’cause we love those guys’. It’s actually an honour for us that they approached us and asked if we can fill in. So we’re doing it, and I’m really excited about it.”
Humble. You can now add that word to a list of words used to describe Metallica. Whereas Aussies have to wait for something as big as Soundwave 2013 or the occasional tour to see bands at that level, they can just throw them into the mix in the US. But hey, that’s cool, I guess.
The news is so sudden that the band is yet to organise their live set. When asked if they will be performing an album in its entirety, much like they have been recently (and let’s face it, that is a great way to get around writing out a setlist) Hammett explained, “We haven’t really discussed it yet. It’s still new and a pretty early development. When I see the guys next week, I’m sure we’re going to discuss our plan of attack.”
I’m sure that despite the rapidly approaching show date, the band will have everything together for an amazing performance. But Green Day or Metallica…which would you prefer?
