By Juliet Speedy and Daniel Rutledge
Metallica fans around the South Island are in celebration mode after a campaign to get the band to Christchurch paid off.
The metal legends have just announced they will be playing a one-off show in Christchurch in addition to their two sell-out concerts in Auckland.
The Christchurch show will be held at the CBS Canterbury Arena on Wednesday September 22, ahead of the October events in Auckland.
The two Auckland concerts at the Vector Arena completely sold out within thirty minutes of tickets going on general sale in May. This led to outrage as many Metallica fans missed out while scalpers almost immediately started re-selling tickets on TradeMe at inflated prices.
South Island fans have since been lobbying for the ‘Master of Puppets’ and ‘Enter Sandman’ hitmakers to play in Christchurch.
Andrea Grom kicked it off, setting up a Facebook page, writing a petition and begging the band to come here. Her page got more than 11,000 supporters.
Tonight, the band has issued the following statement to their fans: “Sometimes you do get what you want! You asked (okay, demanded!) and we heard ya.
“When we got wind of the massive petitions for us to come to Christchurch, New Zealand we just had to check it out and wow, the number of requests were overwhelming! So, the moral of the story is to be careful what you wish for, because 'Tallica is coming to your town on September 22 at CBS Canterbury Arena!"
“Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh my God I’m so excited,” Ms Grom told 3 News today. “I never in my wildest dreams thought they would come to Christchurch. That’s incredible. I’m so, so glad that my hard work – and everybody else out there that helped me – that it’s all paid off.”
However, Metallica went on in their statement to say: “Now here's the catch - our production team scoped it out over the last couple of weeks and no matter how hard we tried to re-configure it, the bottom line is the CBS Canterbury Arena is just not equipped to handle the (full) Death Magnetic show that we've been carting around the world on this tour. That's not going to stop us, but we wanted to let you know that we will not be able to bring the full set up that you may have seen in photos on the site or will see if you happen to hit another show in New Zealand or Australia.
“It's gonna be us and YOU old-school club style in an arena making a whole lot of noise together, and that's what counts. Thanks for all the love and support, see you in September!”
Paul ‘The Axeman’ Martin has been championing metal
in New Zealand
for decades with his show The Axe Attack on
The
Rock FM.
He tells 3news.co.nz of today’s announcement: “It shows Metallica actually care about their fans. Too often fan petitions like this just don’t work, but this is testament to how much they care.”
Metallica has sold over 100 million albums over three decades, but their first four albums received very little mainstream radio or MTV play. Their career was founded on live performances and fan support.
“They’ve become huge superstars because of their fans and they obviously haven’t forgotten that,” says Mr Martin. “And to do this stripped back show without most of their rig in the middle of a tour is almost unheard of. It’s just unreal!”
Presale tickets for the Christchurch show go on sale at 12pm, Tuesday July 13.
3 News