Well isn’t every metal head that ever lived kicking themselves that they weren’t at Belle Isle, Detroit this weekend for the second annual Metallica Orion + More Festival?
For this years event, Metallica announced they were only going to close the event on the second night as opposed to last year when they headlined both nights of the two day event. Turns out they had other plans up their wrist bands.
Those that attended the inaugural event last year, which was held at Bader Field, Atlantic City, would know that the day is filled with surprises. Last year, throughout the day various members of the band would pop up on stage to introduce bands, bassist Rob Trujillo performed on stage with his former band mates Suicidal Tendencies and when Metallica eventually took to the stage they performed Ride The Lightning and The Black Album in their entirety on each night respectively.
So this year you’d be forgiven if you were wondering what was happening at 4.30pm over at the Vans Damage Inc stage. The time slot was given to the band Dehaan who were billed to perform at one of five stages set up. Astute Metallica fans would know that Dehaan is the surname of actor Dane DeHaan, the star of the upcoming Metallica 3D movie Metallica Through The Never, so who was this Dehaan band taking the stage at a Metallica festival?
Earlier more clues surfaced when James Hetfield took to Instagram and posted a photo of Dehaan’s back drop with the hashtags #Don’t miss Dehaan!, #MUYA, #mff, #UwillRegretMissingThem, #IfUdoUmightKillEmAll, #winkWink, #getIt?”
Once 4.30 hit, the Dehaan backdrop had a slight change in it. The word Dehaan had been crossed out and replaced with the words ‘Metal Up Your Ass’ which every one knows was the title Metallica wanted to call their first album Kill ‘Em All. A few minutes later, the opening bars to Hit The Lights began and the crowd soon realised that they were about to witness the classic genre defining 1983 release in full. Hetfield jokingly ended the performance by telling the crowd that next up they would play Reload.
This years Orion + More Festival had 38 bands playing over the two days and day one’s headliner was The Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
