Move over Oasis and Pitbull — Metallica is a concert on steroids. A masterclass in controlled chaos.
The Californian thrash icons rolled into town with their M72 World Tour production, a technical marvel featuring a 120-foot ring-shaped stage with their snake pit dead centre.
Roughly 1,000 fans got unprecedented access inside the circle itself, with drum lifts allowing Lars Ulrich to rotate positions throughout the show. The whole thing travels in 87 trucks with a 130-person crew. It’s absurd. It’s excessive. It’s perfect.
First walk on – AC/DC’s It’s a Long Way to the Top. Then, Ennio Morricone’s The Ecstasy of Gold kicked in. Talk about setting expectations.
Check out our gig guide here.
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Let’s talk about James Hetfield for a second. At 61, the man’s place in mainstream music history remains criminally underrated. While the likes of Bono became household names, Hetfield’s raspy four octave baritone and rhythm guitar wizardry has been delivering some of the most demanding performances in live history. His delivery on Nothing Else Matters last night demonstrated why — the raw emotion, the control, the sheer power. Meanwhile, Kirk Hammett deconstructed the song live, building each guitar part gradually before locking everything into place. It’s thrash metal mastery. These guys aren’t just playing loud — they’re playing precisely.
Mid-set, Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo threw in an impromptu tribute to The Living End’s Prisoner of Society, another acknowledgment of Melbourne’s rock DNA. Thrash can get samey, but Metallica’s always operated on a different frequency. The breakdown on One remains one of metal’s most devastating moments, the rhythmic shifts hitting like freight trains. During the intro to One, vintage bomber sounds circle the entire stadium with startling realism – there are fireworks, pyrotechnics, massive laser displays – it’s everything you want it to be.
In fact, Metallica were so good live, they followed Evanescence, a band that could easily headline stadiums this size themselves, had Amy Lee not (quite respectably) chosen to go a different path with her career.
Lee’s voice remains ageless and technically flawless, and stripped of those nu-metal era rap interludes, Bring Me To Life resonated exactly how she always intended. Her band hit harder than most remember. Suicidal Tendencies opened the night doing their own crazy thing up front — the kind of unpretentious energy that might look jokey to the uninitiated but lands perfectly when you’re just there to have fun.
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Metallica’s been doing this very consistently for over 40 years and they’re still setting a precedent, still experimenting with production, still treating every show like it matters. They clearly love doing it. No encore, just 20 minutes of the band engaging with fans from every angle of the stage after closing with Master of Puppets, One and Enter Sandman.
I guess it’s easy when you can play three of the most seminal metal tracks back-to-back and still leave people wanting more. We’ve had Pitbull, we’ve had Oasis, we’ve had Metallica…bring on Acca Dacca.
Find out more about Metallica and their M72 tour here.
