The good thing about running your own festival is that you have a little more organizational control over how things are handled. Just ask Metallica, who have made the decision to let out a little bit more of their Orion Music + More festival performance available over the Internet.

 

The band’s self-bootlegged footage of their performance of the classic track ‘Blackened’ has been released for fans to check out, which means for all those people telling you for weeks, “Hey, you weren’t there,” well now you can at least see what it was all about.

As for the performance itself, the group lived up to the name of the song by opening the track in complete darkness with only the sounds of a solo guitar ringing out from the stage. But once that opening riff concluded, the lights came up with James Hetfield‘s speedy and blistering guitar work taking the focus.

Another positive with running your own festival is that the majority of the fans are there to see you, and Metallica got that back in full effect with audience members singing along to lines of the song and egging the band on with plenty of fist and arm pumps.

This performance of ‘Blackened’ occurred during the June 24 date of the two-night event at Atlantic City’s Bader Field. Video recaps of both festival dates can be found here and here.

Watch Metallica Perform ‘Blackened’ at Orion Music + More

More From Q 105.7