Metallica’s James Hetfield managed to avoid serious injury while playing in the Netherlands last night, after the legendary metal musician had a pretty ugly looking fall on stage.

As Blabbermouth reports, Metallica were playing at the Netherlands’ Ziggo Dome on Monday night and were halfway through the set’s sixth song, ‘Now That We’re Dead’, when the event happened.

As it turns out, the stage that Metallica were playing on featured a few areas which open up, allowing props to be delivered onto the stage. As footage of the incident shows, James Hetfield didn’t appear to be paying attention to where he was walking when an area of the stage opened up, sending him crashing to the ground.

The best part about the whole ordeal though is that the rest of the band carried on as if nothing had happened. Footage shows guitarist Kirk Hammet and bassist Robert Trujillo looking somewhat unfazed during the ordeal. Of course, once they realise what exactly has happened, they do show a little bit of concern, but being the true showmen that they are, they don’t miss a single note.

Of course, Kirk Hammet might also remember the last time that James Hetfield had a serious onstage incident, with the Metallica frontman suffering severe burns from a pyrotechnical installation when the band was on tour with Guns ‘N’ Roses in 1992. During the song ‘Fade To Black’, a confused Hetfield happened to walk into the area in which a large flame was set to appear. At the time, he suffered severe burns to his arms and face, but was able to recover enough to get back on stage within weeks.

At the time, Hetfield said that his guitar shielded him from severe injury, and if you check out the below footage, you can see that once again, Hetfield’s guitar seemed to take most of the blow.

Check out two different angles of the incident below, thanks to fans who happened to be recording the concert.

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