Concert Review: Metallica w/Limp Bizkit and Ice Nine Kills at Empower Field at Mile High

The view from my seat

First things first, Metallica, Limp Bizkit and Ice Nine Kills put on an absolutely killer show. I had never seen any of the three bands, and I walked away feeling like I would see any of them again. They were all fantastic. More on all of that in a second. First, please indulge me as I explore how weird it was to see a concert in a football stadium.

I’ve seen exactly two events total at Empower Field at Mile High in my life, both football games. One was a Rocky Mountain Showdown game between CSU and CU in like 2013. CSU lost because of course.  The other was a Sunday night football game between the Broncos and 49ers in 2014 where Peyton Manning broke the all-time record for touchdown passes. I watched both of these events from a luxury box because they both had something to do with my corporate job. At the Bronco game I switched from drinking Bud Light to Silver Oak cabernet. The executives I worked with were pretentious dorks, which, when it comes to drinking expensive wine, certainly had its perks.

As I am not a huge football fan, I don’t think about Mile High all that much. Ball Arena I’ve been to dozens of times at least for Avalanche, Nuggets and Mammoth games. Coors Field I feel like I could navigate with my eyes closed, even in a crowd. So when concerts happened at those venues, I was more or less in my comfort zone.

When I went to Metallica last Friday, I realized this was my first ever show at a stadium. I’m 43 years old, and I have never been to a stadium show. That’s a weird thing to type because it’s a weird thing to realize. Sure, I’ve seen big shows before. A handful of times at Ball Arena, multiple Red Rocks concerts, a fair amount at Fiddler’s Green… but the football stadium just feels different. The sheer size and scope of it is staggering.

And here’s the thing, I didn’t exactly know how to act. I felt completely out of place because my normal move of standing up the whole time and excitedly nodding my head and/or singing along made me feel extremely conspicuous because I was sort of an outlier there, especially during Ice Nine Kills where the venue was like 1/3 full. Go see the opening band!

Anyway, on one side of me was a seemingly disinterested teenager, who, after finishing his chicken tenders and fries, barely moved for the entire show until literally everyone in the whole stadium stood up for Metallica. He looked like Patrick Mahomes if Patrick Mahomes was 13 and more into baseball than football. On the other side of me was a skinny old man with long, gray hair who had proportions like a grasshopper and seemed to audibly creak when he stood up. This was not my usual cohort of dirtbag hobbyists and recreational drunks. Needless to say, with this group of folks and the dozens of cops around, I was very self-conscious about my pot smoking. I mean, I did anyway, but the paranoia was intense and real.

This felt like neither concert nor sporting event, but mismatched elements of both. I experience live sports and live music differently, and my inability to properly calculate the vibe here is, I recognize, a ME problem, but it made me realize an event of this scope, in a vacuum, is not really for me. The best part of seeing a show in a football stadium is that you can look up at the Ring of Fame and spend some downtime remembering some guys. Wow… Simon Fletcher. That guy was a beast!

Hard to see, but that's Ice Nine Kills

As for the show, here’s how I described Ice Nine Kills via text to a friend:

This act has been incredible! Like, holy fuck! This is some intense theater kid meets carnies meets pro wrestling meets heavy metal insanity. Suffice to say: This is deeply my shit.

Here’s more:

They’re all dressed like Patrick Bateman. They’ve had zombies eat cops, the lead singer decapitate the guitarist, Art the Clown from Terrifier eat a baby and then rip a totally dope drum solo. This has been goddamn incredible.

I haven’t seen a live set that was this GOING FOR IT to this extent in a very long time, and I adored it. I will definitely see them again when they come to town. I listened to Ice Nine Kills at my computer while writing this, and I didn’t really vibe with it, which I find hilarious.

Limp Bizkit is a band that’s a guilty pleasure for me as much as I allow that to exist as a concept relative to my own life. Right or wrong, I’ve always found too much outward Limp Bizkit fandom mortifying. I think it’s because, first of all, you actually have to say the name LIMP BIZKIT which sounds dumb as hell. Second, I remember the biggest Limp Bizkit fans from my high school and thinking those guys were embarrassing losers. Finally, I know the song “Rollin” because WWE Superstar The Undertaker used to ride his motorcycle to the ring to that song (I hated this version of the character so, so much), and I know the song “My Way” because it was the theme song to WrestleMania X-7.

Fuck all that. Here are three great things from Limp Bizkit’s set:

1. “Faith” and “Break Stuff” were unbelievably fun to sing along to. Y’know what? So was “My Way.” So was “Rollin.” They all pretty much were. These guys make loud, brash, distinctive rock and roll. Phenomenal way to spend an evening, and Limp Bizkit fandom shouldn’t be stigmatized in 2025, if it should have been ever. I’m just happy this goofy shit exists at all.

2. I turned to 13 year-old Mahomes next to me and said, “Can I tell you something?” He said, “Ok” with all the trepidation and surprise you’re picturing from a young boy responding to a stoned old stranger. And I continued, “You’ve got a lot of road ahead of you in life, but I don’t think you will ever hear a song as dumb as this one.” Then I stood up and sang along to every word of “Nookie,” which is indeed, probably the dumbest song you’ll ever hear.

3. In what was one of the coolest moments I’ve seen at any concert, Fred Durst pulled a girl onstage who was dressed up like him, handed her a mic, took her phone and filmed her while she busted out fat bars with Fred during “Full Nelson.” This girl had clearly pictured this moment since she first heard Limp Bizkit, probably practiced and visualized it in her room a million times thinking it would never happen, and then when the time came to actually step up, she absolutely CRUSHED. Fred Durst made this girl’s dream come true, and we all got to watch it. It was awesome. It was also a lot of times to hear a teenage girl scream the word “motherfucker” into a microphone. You can see a semi-decent shot of this below.

Fred Durst filming a girl singing "Full Nelson" with him onstage. So dope.

The craziest thing about standing in unison with 75,000+ other Metallica fans – which apparently over the two nights of their Denver stop set a concert attendance record! – is when you stop to think about the exact specifics of why you’re all there. Metallica opened with “Creeping Death” which is Track 7 off of an album that was released in 1984 that has a picture of an electric chair getting struck by lightning generated from the band’s logo on its cover. Breaking it down like that will always make me laugh, but the fact of the matter is that “Creeping Death” just kicks fucking ass. And I know that’s why we’re all there. I think my point here is that since rock ‘n roll doesn’t occupy the same amount of cultural relevance that it once did, I’m just happy that there are still a ton of us out there who just want to have our nuts rocked off.

I’ll be at some dive bar with 20 other people jamming out to local punk rock and wonder where everyone is because I’m having such a kickass time. New and local music doesn’t have 40 years of nostalgia in its corner. It takes intentional effort to love it, which I understand many people simply don’t want to do.

Having stood there and mainlined Metallica into my soul for more than two hours, I now understand how that feeling can sustain you until the next big stadium show rolls through town. I’m still going to local dive bar shows, but this context was super useful.

Metallica did a good job of breaking up the stuff people wanted to hear into the two nights. As I looked at both setlists (Friday here, and Sunday here), there were songs from Sunday I would have loved to hear live, but didn’t feel in any way gypped by this setup. One of my favorite Metallica songs is “King Nothing” which showed up pretty early in the set. That was both a blessing and a curse because I didn’t really know the next five songs and sorta temporarily ran out of gas. So I sat down, which made me appreciate the stadium experience a little more.

Because then once “Orion” finished, the lights went out and “Nothing Else Matters” fired up and it was nothing but bangers the rest of the way. “Sad but True” gave way to “Battery” which led to “Fuel” which slammed into “Seek & Destroy” and culminated with “Master of Puppets.” It was a fucking wrecking ball to end the evening and it was spectacular!

The showmanship, the gratitude, the ambience of the evening… everything about it was epic. I know I wrote earlier that I’m not sure stadium shows are for me, and I still think that’s true. But this one is going to stay with me for a long time. I think I have room in my life for an occasional stadium show. =)

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"Nothing Else Matters"