TORONTO -- There are certain events at which the presence of a rock critic is superfluous -- or more superfluous than usual, depending on your point of view.

Sunday night's "surprise" club gig at the Pheonix by the still-reigning kings of metal, Metallica, was definitely one of them.

Blessed with some of the most fiercely loyal fans in any genre, the group followed in the footsteps of its Lollapalooza co-headliner, Soundgarden, by agreeing to be the prize in a campaign called Blind Date, an expensive promotion in which contest-winners are given tickets to a small club to see a major band whose identity is kept secret 'til said band actually steps on stage. It is also, not incidentally, designed to sell large quantities of beer for Molson, which is sponsoring 10 such concerts across Canada this year. Soundgarden's club show in Vancouver last weekend was the first. Metallica's was No. 2.

As far as the role of a critic at such an event, well, once he/she raises the thorny conundrum arising from such an arrangement -- a bona fide stadium band giving its fans the rare chance to see them in intimate surroundings, on the one hand, while tacitly shilling for a beer company, on the other -- and asks the obligatory question about profit -- the group's rumored $250,000 payday was met with a coolly efficient "I will neither confirm nor deny that figure" by Molson's director of corporate communications -- their relevance to the proceedings pretty much comes to an end.

After all, principle aside, there's no way a true music fan is going to be anything less than thrilled at the opportunity to see a band of Metallica's stature in a venue roughly 1/30th the size they'd normally see them in.

Plus, Metallica DID insist that 350 tickets be made available directly to its fanclub members, some of whom drove hundreds of miles to see the show. (The other 500 tickets went to contest-winners.)

What the fans/winners got was exactly what they came for: a more casual version of a regular set.

Kicking off with a sneering cover of So What, originally cut by cult-punkers the Anti-Nowhere League, Metallica opted for a very fan-conscious set. Squeezing in just three songs from their new album, Load, they played something from each of their previous five albums, and even dipped into their '87 covers EP for the evening's first encore, Last Caress (see setlist below).

Though the set inspired almost non-stop moshing, and even the occasional outburst of slamdancing, the high points were a blistering version of For Whom The Bell Tolls, along with the regular set-closer, Enter Sandman -- which featured huge blasts of dry ice from half a dozen pipes mounted in the ceiling -- and the Motorhead homage, Overkill.

The band must've had a good time, too. They returned for an unscheduled second encore, reaching all the way back to their first album, 1983's Kill 'Em All, for Motorbreath.

It was almost enough to make even a critic forget about all that other extraneous stuff and concentrate solely on the moment.

Here's the complete setlist: