Metros

Rock/​Metal night club that has a certain age of customers that are mainly made up of students. Most nights get busy by 11pm so unless you want to queue get in early. Sometimes it’s hit and miss, I have queue here before for a full hour and now I just can’t be bothered. As a student it’s a must for most fans of this type of music offering cheap booze and some great music, however it tends to be similar music on each night so a Monday night will be the same music every week.
If your between 18 – 21 you may enjoy it after that your too old, that’s me included. The floors always smell due to the amount of spilt alcohol and vomit. This place is a basement bar that has a long dance floor and three bars. It can really get hot down there so they put a big fan so you can stand next to it if you feel like your going to pass out.
You will find a lot of student here as well as the hard-​core rockers and other themed dressed punk rock metalers. The toilets are upstairs and become crowded during the night, as the policy is to cram everyone in.

Nicknamed ‘Sweatro’s’ by those in the know, Metros isn’t a place you need to take an hour and a half getting ready to go to. Indeed, I’d avoid showing beforehand as it will be a complete waste of time.
Small, dark, smelly and uncomfortable are all criticisms you can legitimately level at Metros and it’s made this way by the sheer number of people that insist on going. It’s funny really how places like this become so popular.
This being said, the drinks are dead cheap and it’s not unknown for free shots to be handed out with drinks (if you’re a girl and the barman takes a liking to you). I can understand why the music choice is popular because they opt for a rockier theme than other clubs; the predicable tunes coming out of Oceana can be frustrating at times.
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and there’s no doubt it’s uncomfortable, but some people will enjoy Metros.

The rock/​metal club once known by its full title Club Metropolitan is a curious little hellhole. If you live in Cardiff, are of any alternative music persuasion and haven’t been to Metros it’s safe to say you’re very much in the minority. Years of floors stickier than the average adult cinema floor and unexplained liquid dripping from the ceiling kind of added to its charm, even if the smell in summertime resolutely did not. And nights here can range from the legendary (thanks to all manner of dangerously cheap drinks deals) to legendarily horrific (same reason, only the floods of budget well spirits often mean leaving without vomiting and/​or the help of a bouncer isn’t an option). Those over 25 can start to resemble a paedophile in a playground on certain nights — particularly the student-​heavy Wednesdays — and some of the more decorated precocious brats can make anybody without a range of piercings start to feel like outsiders in what is essentially an outsiders’ bar. But it’s hard to hate on anywhere so cheap that, in the past, has been grubby enough to enable surreptitious puking onto the long-​suffering carpet without anyone will even noticing. It’s the best way to make space for another round of crazily cheap booze, at least.

The thing that has always been a royal pain in the rectum with Metros is that they always seem to pick on the shortest person in a group of people to ask for id. Now this isn’t usually a problem for me personally as I stand at 6ft 2″. I have a bad habit of getting straight in at clubs and have learned not to just go straight in and head for the bar. In my youth I have left many people behind on the door heh. Anyway, every time a group of us have come here, the doormen have picked on the shortest one of our group and funnily enough, this is usually the eldest of our group too. Being the eldest they don’t tend to worry about being id’d so they don’t always have anything on their person to verify their maturity which then causes a situation. Leave one person out, split into two groups or ditch the place all together and find somewhere else where the actually have a bit more common sense. We have always taken the latter option which has resulted in a sudden realisation for the doormen that about 20 people are about to take their money elsewhere and have a great night.
So when you get inside this joint. There’s a coat check in, toilets ahead of you and stairs to the left heading down to the bar and dance areas. This club is dark, sweaty, more often than not sticky and pretty dirty. I wouldn’t go sitting on the floor if you can help it. What I do like is that they used to play really good tunes here, I haven’t been for a year or two now but we all used to really dance our heads off in here until the slip something random into the mix which would stop you in your tracks and make you want to get a drink and sit down. That really would get to me quite a lot. All in all though, if you can bear the negatives then I still really like this place. I feel a night out coming on already.

Ok, some people hate this place and it is become harder and harder to drag them to it, but I love Metros. Yes it may seem a bit dark and sticky as the majority of the club seems to be underground but there is something ever so appealing about this place.
HIt it on a wednesday and you will find they get the bubble machine out, yes you might be sweaty due to the intense heat and bubble liquid might be the last thing you need, but it adds to a sense of atmosphere, we’re all in this sweaty dance together.
The music is a brilliant mix of retro and modern, be prepared to hear beach boys, kings of leon and unknown rock music all mixed into the same playlist. They do have deals here where the entrance can be quite a lot to get in, maybe about £6 but then you can get 99p doubles, well they used to do this anyway, I don’t know how inflation has affected this now due to my friends resistance I don’t get to go here anymore.
Rumour has it that if you stick around til the end you get toast! I have never made it to the end and am quite sad to have never realized if this is in fact true. So let that be your mission Unilocalers!

The rule with Metro’s is come as you are simple really, it’s cheap, full of students and they play all kinds of music. On the other hand Metro’s is dark, dingy, uncomfortable, hot, it smells and I will ONLY come here if there is an overwhelming majority of people that I’m with decide they want to go. It is 100% true that the walls are wet and i don’t mean they feel damp its like the building is sweating and who can blame it? With the amount of people that are constantly crammed inside its walls I feel fairly sorry for it.
Ok so maybe I am being a little harsh it is cheap and there is definitely scope to have a good night but if I had any advice to any student coming to Cardiff — turn up half cut.

Ah, Metros. Highlight of my student years. Always criminally good songs, cheap drinks and… you guessed it… toast!
I remember back in the day we used to dress up to go here. I don’t know what it was, perhaps too many Lindsay Lohan movies while pre-​loading, but my group of friends would always put our gladdest rags on for a night at good olé Club Metropolitan.
But times are changed, and we’ve been imitated by other girls working our brand of ironic chic. And now we’ve been overtaken. I guess we always were too postmodern punk for our own good.
Other changes include beer mats. BEER MATS. In a place where sweat drips from the ceiling and you lose your shoes to the floor? My only theory is that they’ve introduced them to protect the bottoms of the glasses.
Walls which once recounted disaster through newspaper clippings have been painted with rainbow spirals, and the toilets even have multicoloured seats.
But this is an alternative bar so we relish the negative. After all, goth was built on fear, punk on hatred and emo on pain. Metros really taps into this, sculpting a place that evokes all three of these elements. I’ll be seeing you on Wednesday.
URBAN CHALLENGE: Speak to someone with more piercings than you.

I’ve be putting this review off for a long time, as it’s my boyfriend’s favourite club and I absolutely hate it.
I once heard a girl say that she loved Metros because you can go in combats and flat shoes, no make up and bad hair and not care. That pretty much sums up Metros. Metros is a club with no make-​up on. Some people like this. Some people (clearly) like casual, don’t-have-to-look-good nights, but I like dressing up and looking pretty. Sometimes getting ready is more fun than the night itself. If I wanted to not make an effort, I could play loud music, put on my pyjamas and sit in the dark and get drunk at home without getting covered in other people’s sweat.
The music isn’t so bad, and yes, the drinks are astonishingly cheap. The barmen are also lovely and this is one of the few places I actually tip, despite not being a huge fan of the club itself.
But I just don’t like being in there. Too claustrophobic, too grubby and not enough toilets in the ladies. Put me back in my classy cocktail bar!

Calling all students! If you haven’t heard of Metros club then where have you been? Metros is a club that all the students like to talk about, mainly because it’s so cheap in there, but that doesn’t necessary make it the nicest place inside as you will see when you enter deep underground surrounded by the warmth of the people and the lights. This is how they get you to buy drinks. It’s a tactic that works, as they are cheap.
Metros or ‘Sweatros’ as it is known by the locals holds many night with different types of music; so you can expect different crowds to turn up each night. I have been there a few times and vaguely enjoyed myself but if I’m honest it’s not the best club in town to go to. If you stupidly drunk then you might just enjoy it and not worry about the walls (never ever touch walls! You have been warned) the thing that annoyed me most about it was the queuing to get inside. I went on a Wednesday night (bad idea) and queued for over an hour and a half. To this day I don’t know why I did but I know never to make that mistake again.
Metros are a club that is good in terms of money and it does have decent music certain nights. But remember it can get hot and you might feel uncomfortable. Stay until the end of the night though as they provide you with toast to soak up all that alcohol you drank.

The glorious «Sweatros» holds the unique distinction of being probably the only club in all of the UK to smell worse after the inception of the smoking ban a couple of years ago. I defy anyone to squint through the heady aromas of rancid sweat, feet and general stench and tell me they wouldn’t rather be choking on some second hand smoke. At least you can take advantage of the obscenely cheap drinks and consume enough poor quality spirits to forget how to smell, taste, speak or feel anything at all…
The drinks are so cheap it’s laughable. The local council are even targeting Metro’s as it’s apparently irresponsible! Every time I’ve been in here I’m surprised the next morning at how much money I have left. As far as I can remember it’s about £1.50 maximum for a double house whisky or vodka. The quality is awful and the first couple of drinks will be a struggle because of it. But once the alcohol takes hold Metro’s embraces you in it’s large, comforting, inexpensive arms, you’ll be in there until the wee hours, inexplicably wasted from a fiver,
The music is generally rock/​metal/​emo/​punk and the dancefloor is always crowded. The people here are generally friendly but the usual trials and tribulations that come with large volumes of poor quality alcohol are to be expected.
All in all it’s not too bad in Metro’s. Everything you’ve heard about it is true — It stinks, it’s sticky and generally grimy inside. The prices aswell do call for certain people to exercise some caution. The amount of times I’ve seen people being violently sick outside there isn’t good. I normally take in a maximum of £15 just to make sure I don’t drink myself blind. It’s a fun night though and if you’re into rock music, it’s a must-​visit in the city.

Metros is… well, it’s not for everyone.
The rumours you’ll hear about the sticky walls, about the sweat, about the heat and about the smell are all true. The walls are sticky, running slick with the condensed sweat of a thousand excellent nights. It is hotter than Hell down there, especially down by bottom bar. And the smell is ingrained in the floors; the club has a tendency to leak during heavy rain, which means the scent of rainwater seeps into the concrete and the carpets. It’s not the nicest place.
So why four stars? Well, Metros is the least pretentious place in Cardiff. A few years back, it held the distinction of being the only real alternative club in Cardiff. Now that Fuel and Bogiez have cropped up, Metros no longer holds that title. Instead, it has become the by-​word for just an awesome night spent on the dancefloor. Instead of the aggressive Revs rugby lads or the snobbish metal heads of Fuel, Metros caters to everyone now and the atmosphere is so good, there is rarely any real trouble.
The drinks are cheap, the DJs know how to keep the crowd moving and they give you free toast because they’re awesome. The crowd’s a little young being mostly composed of 18 to 21 year olds on a Wednesday, but Friday and Saturday are the nights for the generally older crowd.

This alternative club has been going for years, and has always had a reputation for being a bit dark and dingy but fun, full of fairly young, drunk students and other indie kids.
It’s usually either crammed full of people or completely deserted, and those who venture there will either love it or hate it. To get a picture of the place just imagine sticky floors, dark, condensation-​covered walls, and a slightly sweaty stench. You may feel old if you’ve hit 25.
With a reasonably cheap bar and no dress code, Metros is unpretentious and laid-​back, but it’s also pretty grim. The music tends to be mainly emo /​indie /​chart stuff, rather than hard rock — although they occasionally play some ska or punk.

Okay, so Metros sells you cheap drinks (insanely cheap drinks) which make you go all wobbly and buy more and more and more drinks.
Then they cram you all onto a dingy dancefloor in an underground club which, quite frankly smelt like roses before the smoking ban compared to how it smells now.
Then you vomit in the alley outside before heading in for some more cheap drinks.
Then they feed you toast and curry at 1am, beguiling you into thinking that they are responcible and kind.
And then you go back the next week and it all begins again…
Get out while you still can!

Sweatro’s as mentioned above literally has it dripping off the walls. It’s that hot in there! It is also incredibly narrow, to which you constantly feel in everyone else’s way. First off it’s not that cheap to get in there of a weekend and is always so crowded you can’t swing a gnat about. If your much over 20 I wouldn’t recommend the club, the demographic feels incredibly young here and the music shows. The fact of the matter is I have quite fussy musical taste and the place though once playing Deftones does not cater to my tastes at all. You know it’s a bad club when you feel the need to take advantage of the cheap drinks to get drunk enough to tolerate everything. Maybe that’s just the alcoholic in me speaking… Either way, grumble grumble, I’ve avoided the place for a very long time.
However if your a student and like Indie/​emo/​poprock etc you’d probably really enjoy the place and is worth going on student nights such as wednesday to take full advantage of the £1.20 lemonade and vodka drinks. You just won’t see me there that’s all.

I always end up at Metros, I never plan on going but inevitably at the end of the night it’s always guaranteed a stop in. At one time it was one of Cardiff’s only ‘alternative’ clubs but since things like ‘Fuel’ and ‘Bogiez’ have rolled into town, metros has melted into mediocrity. The crowd is mainly under 25, first time clubbers with no other alternative, weaned on the legend of Metros. Expect lots of band T-​Shirts, unwashed hair and panda make up. Wednesdays are best, student night brings with it a shot of (not so premium quality) Vodka/​Whiskey and a mixer for £1.20. I remember the days when it was under a pound. The music is mostly popular indie with a few medium metal hits spliced in for good measure. Towards the end of the night it all goes a bit ‘family wedding’. I distinctly remember doing the twist once through a whiskey haze. Stick around until closing time and take full advantage of the infamous ‘Free toast’. Lastly, if you’re dressed nicely, proceed with caution. It’s underground and rammed with teenagers so it’s no wonder it’s earned the nickname ‘Sweatros’, the walls have been known to literally drip after a good Friday night.