Metallica The Band's Disastrous Indonesia Concerts

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Today we take a look at the disastrous series of shows Metallica performed in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1993.

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A decade and a half later the country would be the site of another series of disastrous concerts featuring the band metallica. Local authorities would call it the “metallica incident”, but what happened? Stay tuned to find out

It was announced in March of 1993 that heavy metal band Metallica would be coming to Indonesia for the first time and playing a pair of shows on April 10 and 11th. Indonesia is a pretty religious country, in fact it’s the most populace muslim country in the entire world, but that doesn’t mean heavy metal isn’t loved by the nation’s youth. According to greenleft.org in 1993 Metal music cassettes, were found pretty much everywhere mostly in a pirated fashion. In the weeks and month leading up to the band’s arrival in the country.there were reports of a notable increase in the countries youth wearing black tank tops and headbands.

The capital city Jakarta in 1993 had a population 10 million people with more than half of the population being under the age of 20 and being underemployed or just not having jobs at all. A lot of young people would work in factories or as street peddlers. There was a lot of resentment and hostility towards the countries ruling class and even in the run up to metallica’s concert in 1993 riots were a frequent site.

The ticket prices for Metallica’s Indonesian shows started at $17 US going all the way up to $75, which was considered quite expensive as the minimum monthly wage for a lot of young people was well below even the cheapest tickets. In addition to that the venue only held 12,000 people per show, but some reports claim 20,000 tickets were sold, so yeah things were going to get real ugly.

And Metallica were on tour at the time promoting their 1991 self titled or black album And The first of 2 shows the band played were marred by problems. Initial reports claimed both people who had tickets but weren’t allowed in and those who didn’t have them tried to crash the gate allegedly throwing rocks at concert goers and security. The security got pretty heavy handed and the result was more violence and chaos. But also making matters worse was that the local promoter hadn’t anticipated such commotion and didn’t have enough security guards to police the event.

Regardless of the tension outside the venue the first show would go on as planned with 6,000 police and army soldiers standing by to keep order. Up to 110 people would be arrested following the rioting and 70 people were reported to be injured including some security guards. After disturbances outside the stadium were brought under control , gangs of youths went through surrounding areas setting fire to cars, malls and shops throwing rocks at upscale homes. Even the minister of justice would be trapped in his car during the rioting with his windshields being smashed, and driver being injured. The minster would also lose his cellphone and some jewelry to the mob.

The bus carrying the band arrived and was immediately surrounded by fans. The military moved in with canes to clear the way.

The rioting was ended after 1000 marines and military police came onto the scene, opening of the gates to the concert, letting thousands of people in for free with about half of those in attendance for the first show being paying fans. So according to some reports even paying fans got screwed over.

It was initially reported in the media that the riot and unrest happened because of class resentment. The ticket prices for the events ran 10 to 50 times higher than the daily minimum wage of the average Indonesian factory worker and the location of the venue was in Jakarta’s wealthiest suburb. The government tried to quell and silence any idea of class warfare telling academics and intellectuals not to “analyze” the event “excessively.’ Others in the country pointed at the ridiculous notion of the effect of heavy metal music on the countries youth Claiming it provoked anti-social behavior

There was even a third theory that the rioters were not metal fans at all, but members of Indonesian’s democractic party which had apparently appropriated some of the symbols of heavy metal in their 1992 election campaign.

Now the second show metallica played went a little more smoothly as the government deployed 7000 soldiers to police the event, but once again it was reported that thousands of fans who hadn’t paid for the concert still got into the

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