Metallica embodies esprit de corpse at Wachovia Center

Saturday night at the sold-out Wachovia Center, the men of Metallica gave no indication they plan to give up the ghost any time soon, despite the four large metal caskets hanging precariously over their heads, a visual riff on the funereal cover art of their latest album,

Death Magnetic

.

Scurrying out onto the darkened stage like black-clad ninjas, illuminated by a two-story-high mesh of lasers, Metallica launched into the new "That Was Just Your Life" with the conviction of men who have learned the hard way that no one here gets out alive.

Sounding at times like a B-52 trapped in the belly of an oil tanker, they dug deep into their hairier, scarier '80s catalog, unleashing the punishing roar of "Creeping Death" and "Ride the Lightning."

Then they dialed back the heaviness for songs like "The Unforgiven" and "Nothing Else Matters" that have helped make them the U2 of metal.

The band seemed eager to connect with the crowd - "Did you miss us?" asked frontman James Hetfield, his hair shorn into a boyish shock of blond - and the tour's unique staging seems designed to minimize the distance between artists and audience.

The outsized stage took up most of the floor of the Wachovia, with the general-admission crowd surrounding it.

There was no set upstage or downstage. Instead, microphones ringed the perimeter of the stage, and band members constantly shuffled from this side to that, anchored by drummer Lars Ulrich, positioned dead center on a rotating riser.

The net effect was a constantly migrating (and democratizing) sense of where the front row was. At the same time, the sheer vastness of the stage rendered things somewhat diffuse; the band was everywhere and nowhere at once.

But even if the staging denied you the ability to see the foursome in close proximity, you sure could hear them, with the volume set at skull-crushing decibels.

And barring an uncharacteristic stretch of sloppiness midway through the epic "Master of Puppets" and a rushed, and thus somewhat anticlimactic, intro to its biggest hit, "Enter Sandman," Metallica was an exemplar of precision ferocity and heavy-metal pageantry.

During "One," flames rising out of the top of the guitar amps danced in time with the music.

Come the climax of "Enter Sandman," fiery Oz-like pillars erupted from the stage. You could feel the heat on your face 30 rows away.