TRIVIUM To Open For METALLICA At 'Intimate' Florida Concert

TRIVIUM will open for METALLICA at the heavy metal giants' "intimate" concert tomorrow night (Thursday, November 4) at Hard Rock Live at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida.

Tickets for the 7,000-seat-theater show went on sale on July 30 and quickly sold out.

Earlier today, METALLICA announced TRIVIUM's participation in the concert, writing on social media: "Florida! If you're headed out to the show tomorrow at @hardrockholly, make sure to get there early to catch our friends in @triviumband. It's been a while since we've shared a stage with them, so we're psyched that they're joining us for the fun and games!"

Back in April, TRIVIUM bassist Paolo Gregoletto reflected on what it was like to meet his heroes in METALLICA. Recalling the night in 2006 when he and his bandmates ended up having dinner with Kirk Hammett in Amsterdam, he told Epic Footnote Productions' "There Goes My Hero" podcast: "It was at the hotel they were staying at. It was in Amsterdam. It was at a really fancy place, and they had a fancy sushi restaurant. Kirk really loved [TRIVIUM's] 'Ascendancy' [album], and he just wanted to come out and hang out with us. So we went to dinner at that place in the hotel and pretty much just ordered everything on the menu — like, every single thing… I don't know how long we were there, but it was quite awhile. It was crazy. And then at the end, he kind of jokingly handed me the bill, like, 'Here you go.'

"It was pretty wild to just hang out with this dude," Paolo continued. "I don't even remember what we talked about; that's the craziest thing. It's almost like one of those experiences [where] you know it happened, but you don't really remember. It was like waking up from a dream and being, like, 'Wow, that was wild. What happened?' You don't remember all the details, but you know something happened."

Asked how old he was when he first discovered METALLICA's music, Paolo said: "I think it was '96 — I'm pretty sure that's when I found METALLICA. So I was probably about 11 or 12 when I discovered them. It was right when I started playing bass. I saw [METALLICA's] 'King Nothing' [video] on MTV, and I was just, like, 'That's the band. That's the coolest thing ever. And these dudes are playing in the snow, and they look cool.' At that point, all I knew was pop-punk and whatever was popular on MTV. So they were very different. And, of course, metal in the '90s — this is before I discovered PANTERA and anything like that — metal is not on MTV anymore at that point; it was starting to slowly filter out. And I wasn't watching 'Headbangers Ball', if it was even around in '96. So that was it. METALLICA was kind of flying the flag in the mainstream world, and thank God I found them, 'cause I don't know if I would've gotten into music the way I did. To me, that was what made me serious about it, like, 'Okay, I wanna play this type of music. I wanna do what these guys are doing.' And pretty much after that, that was my homework after school — was to just watch METALLICA videos and watch [METALLICA's] 'Live Shit: Binge & Purge' [concert videos] and all that stuff, and just try to emulate them with my own local band and trying to figure out how to make it work."