<nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" "> Lions of Metal, Thrashing With Purpose Still </nyt_headline>

UNIONDALE, N.Y. — Metallica closed its main set on Thursday night at the Nassau Coliseum here as if it were a Raffi show, or a Promise Keepers meeting. “You make Metallica feel great,” the frontman, James Hetfield, barked into his microphone. “Thank you, friends!”

Platitudes have not typically been among the strengths of this preternaturally wise band, which formed almost 30 years ago and quickly became one of the most proficient and influential outfits in American heavy metal. And this was not Mr. Hetfield’s only bland affirmation. (“You’ve come here to release some energy tonight.” “You are the fifth member of Metallica.”) But somehow with his gravelly rasp and all-black ensemble — Mr. Hetfield remains one of the few people in the world who can make skintight black jeans look tough — he can say these things to a several-thousand-strong crowd consisting largely of loudly bellowing bruisers, and still inspire fear and awe.

That’s because even after a decade and a half of creative muddle, the Metallica mystique trumps all. Here, for more than two hours, the musicians and their fans gladly imagined the band as it once was — punishing, technically astonishing, relentless.

It was a vision Metallica — Mr. Hetfield, the guitarist Kirk Hammett, the bassist Robert Trujillo and the drummer Lars Ulrich — often lived up to, playing no songs released after 1991, apart from those from the inconsistent “Death Magnetic” (Warner Brothers), its ninth studio album, which came out last year.

That record is closer in spirit to the band’s seminal work than anything it has produced in years, a point Mr. Hetfield made sure the crowd understood.

“What really complements the new stuff is the old stuff,” he assured, as if trying to sneak someone into an exclusive club who was not on the guest list. The new stuff, though, rarely made it past the velvet rope. Apart from “That Was Just Your Life” and “All Nightmare Long,” it was overlong and flabby, bogged down with clunky lyrics, helped only slightly by dashes of flamboyant ingenuity on the parts of Mr. Hammett and Mr. Ulrich.

Flaws notwithstanding, this show was a convincing argument for the continued relevance of the king-size rock extravaganza. The band worked a large, rectangular platform on the arena floor, with fans clamoring at barriers on all four sides, giving the performance the aura of a cage match. Each band member was stalked by his own spotlight, suggesting four people putting on four separate concerts, working the breadth of the stage with the purpose of a Broadway musical, if not the regimentation.

Mr. Ulrich played with visible malice, especially on the band’s slower material, like “One” and “The Unforgiven,” and after most songs he jumped off his stool and ran around the stage, inciting the crowd. Mr. Hammett was, as ever, nimble-fingered and lissome, his guitar erupting into taut howls when needed, while Mr. Trujillo, who wields his bass as if showing off a prizewinning fish, played meaty figures that neatly supported Mr. Ulrich’s propulsion. (“Death Magnetic” is Mr. Trujillo’s first recording with the band, which he joined after it completed its last album, “St. Anger,” in 2003.)

Metallica played four songs from its self-titled 1991 album, the one that crossed the band over to mainstream acclaim and without which it wouldn’t have survived its subsequent artistic lull. Before its encore the band closed with the deliciously excruciating ballad “Nothing Else Matters,” on which Mr. Hetfield dropped an octave at the bridge, making the song even more morose, and a terrifying “Enter Sandman,” during which he executed a perfect flying kick, injecting an unanticipated moment of joy.

When Mr. Hetfield sang with minimal accompaniment, though, as on the end of “Cyanide” and “The End of the Line,” he exposed what has always been Metallica’s greatest liability, especially in its later years. Mr. Hetfield’s voice is dusty and sometimes wobbly, impactive but not nuanced. Inevitably, it seems, he’ll make a rockabilly/outlaw-country solo project that will benefit from these qualities, but in a band this forceful, it’s too often a destabilizing force.

On “Death Magnetic” his vocals are more prominent than ever, a far cry from the band’s sound at the start of its career, as heard in the encore, which concluded with “Phantom Lord” and “Seek and Destroy,” from the band’s 1983 debut, “Kill ’Em All.”

As the group soldiered through a vicious version of “Seek and Destroy,” a hundred or so oversize black beach balls with the Metallica logo dropped from the rafters. As they collected onstage — creating a boffo conceptual art piece or a playpen — the band members continued to play, kicking them into the crowd. They looked, for a few moments, very young.

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