Metallica melts AT&T crowd in the show the NFL didn't want

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - FEBRUARY 06: Metallica performs onstage at CBS RADIO's third annual 'The Night Before' at AT&T Park on February 6, 2016 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for CBS) less SAN FRANCISCO, CA - FEBRUARY 06: Metallica performs onstage at CBS RADIO's third annual 'The Night Before' at AT&T Park on February 6, 2016 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images ... more Photo: Kevin Winter, Getty Images For CBS Photo: Kevin Winter, Getty Images For CBS Image 1 of / 77 Caption Close Metallica melts AT&T crowd in the show the NFL didn't want 1 / 77 Back to Gallery

Metallica returned home on Saturday to play a rowdy AT&T Park show - their strafing power chords echoing through the San Francisco night, hopefully far enough to keep a few members of Coldplay from getting their beauty sleep.

It was the show the NFL didn't want, choosing the latter British pop band as the headline act for Super Bowl 50 on Sunday afternoon at Levi's Stadium. But Metallica made a good argument that the local band deserved the bid, and not just because members built their fame in clubs a bike ride away from Super Bowl City.

Like punk rock and rap, heavy metal works best when the artists have an edge, and the Super Bowl snub, real or imagined, seemed to provide one. The band offered two heartfelt speeches on the subject, by the two longest-tenured members - singer/guitarist James Hetfield at the beginning of the night, and drummer Lars Ulrich at the end.

"I think it all works out for a reason," Hetfield said, two songs into the concert. "We got to play a whole show ... and one more thing I'd like to say is GIMME FUEL GIMME FIRE GIMME THAT WHICH I DESIRE!"

It was an awkward segue, but it seemed sincere, which has always been Metallica's secret weapon. Whether they're performing, going through group therapy on film, or trying an ill-advised new direction, the band remains earnest. The pyrotechnics and lasers are all part of the illusion. But the gratitude is real. Metallica, like few other acts, can make a 50,000-seat stadium show feel intimate.

Musically, fans had little to complain about. With a few forgivable exceptions, the band was remarkably tight for a 34-year-old outfit. The set list seemed made for the widest audience, leaning on crowd-pleasers and the more melodic corners of their catalogue, starting with the Reagan-era face melter "Creeping Death" and ending with "Enter Sandman" at the close of a three-song encore.

The highlight of the night was a menacing "Master of Puppets," played with an urgency that made everyone forget for nine minutes that the song was recorded three decades earlier. "Seek and Destroy" was equally blistering and a victory lap of sorts; the song was played during Metallica's earliest appearances at San Francisco venues including the Old Waldorf on Battery Street and The Stone on Broadway.

The band played nothing from their newer albums - including the solid "Death Magnetic" from 2008. Only 1980s and 1990s songs were chosen, with all the well-known slower tracks ("Nothing Else Matters," "The Unforgiven") represented. There was just one cover: Thin Lizzy's "Whiskey in the Jar."

Billed as "CBS Radio's The Night Before," the concert was also the debut for a new stage production, which will travel in a yet-to-be-solidified tour. (The band is also working on a new album, which was referenced twice, but no new songs were played.) More than the band itself, the stage show could use some fine-tuning. The enormous big-screen backdrop, split in five segments, often showed the same image five times - making the audience feel as if they were watching the proceedings from the perspective of a house fly.

Animations, quick edits, extreme close-ups and effects including dripping blood and broken glass effects further served to distance Metallica members from the fans. With views so horrible in a stadium show, the producers should default to a panoramic view, so the crowd in the cheap seats can actually see the band. (To be fair, the lasers and fire blasts were in mid-tour form.)

Metallica hasn't mellowed, as much as their once-outlaw brand of musical badass-ery has caught up to the mainstream. There were plenty of children at the show. And while a Metallica concert still isn't a high percentage place to meet your future wife, the male/female ratio has reached the point that we might see a line at the women's bathroom before the band's 40th anniversary.

In other words, they probably should have been playing on Sunday as well.

Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle's pop culture critic. E-mail: phartlaub@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub.