Metal
Metallica opened their “Life Burns Faster” residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas on Thursday 1 October. They opened with “Battery” and closed fifteen tracks later on “Master Of Puppets”.
In between came “Creeping Death”, “Now That We’re Dead”, “Sad But True”, “The Shortest Straw”, “Wherever I May Roam”, “The Day That Never Comes”, “…And Justice For All”, a Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo doodle titled “Sleepwalk My Life Away”, “Nothing Else Matters”, “The Call Of Ktulu”, “Lux Æterna”, “Ride The Lightning”, “The Memory Remains” and “Seek & Destroy”.
The residency runs to 13 March 2027 and carries different setlists on Thursdays and Saturdays. Sixteen shows have been added to the eight announced for October, taking it to twenty-four: 29 and 31 October, 5 and 7 November, 28 and 30 January, 4, 6, 18, 20, 25 and 27 February, and 4, 6, 11 and 13 March.
Lars Ulrich has said the decision came from watching U2 there: “About 12 seconds into the opening night of Sphere with U2 back in ’23, I thought, ‘We have to do this. It’s completely uncharted territory’.” The venue opened in September that year, holds 17,600 people and has hosted residencies by U2, Phish, Dead & Company and The Eagles.
Text by Roger Estivill