Hit ALL The Lights! Sin City Gets Lit Up as Metallica Turn It Into Lars Vegas and Begin Their Mammoth Residency by The Sphere

It’s the very first performance of their highly-anticipated residency, which will see them play every Thursday and Saturday night at the one-of-a-kind venue for 24 weeks, with the promise of no songs being repeated over each pair of nights. “Are you sure you want to play this?” James Hetfield asks his bandmates.

The vast curve of the domed venue – 112 metres high and 157 metres wide, an absolute colossus – glows burnt sienna behind them as James talks.

“It’s kind of a shitty song,” he continues, a huge version of him floating in the curve’s middle. “I guess a couple people might like it. It’s not our best work. We wrote this when we were little girls. We were like 12 years old, and now we’re, like 112, it’s crazy. And I must say, for modern technology and old guys playing loud music, this is pretty fucking awesome.”

He teases a riff so the crowd know what’s about to happen before initiating the by-now standard call and response for Seek & Destroy. As he does, the hazy orange behind the band – way too big to be called a backdrop, more an apocalyptic sky – gives way to a garage door opening to show a modest practice space within, presumably modelled after the one Metallica had in their very early days. The scene is in black and white, symbolising that past, and soon shifts to navigating the surrounding run-down city streets, the 20,000-strong crowd travelling with the band as they run through the song.

It’s another phenomenal moment in an evening of phenomenal moments. Of overwhelming moments. Of “Fuck! Am I really seeing this?” moments. Over two hours, James, Kirk Hammett, Rob Trujillo and Lars Ulrich present a series of overwhelming immersive experiences that redefine what live gigs are and what they can do. Because most of the time – unless you’re right by the stage – it’s impossible to tear yourself away from the spectacles taking place on every side of you.

Even before the band start playing, the scene distorts your notion of reality. Because what you see is a stage loaded with guitars, basses, drums, a piano, a Lemmy cutout, a pinball machine, all in front of a plethora of ’Tallica fan flags and banners that rise up into infinity. There’s also the head and arm of the Lady Justice sculpture from …And Justice For All, looking as if those appendages are ready to be shipped off to a museum.

It all looks so real, but then you remember that not only are they giant – like, really giant – they’re also just on a screen. It’s a mindfuck, to say the least. When the set starts, it cranks that up to 11. Opener Battery begins with a person running through a calm landscape littered with makeshift wooden graves before Creeping Death reveals a mystical world ravaged by time and weather, rain and lighting filling the artificial sky above the band and crowd. The place becomes a church for Now That We’re Dead – the magnified band members appearing inside stained glass windows that feel a thousand, if not a million, times bigger than their real-life counterparts – while Wherever I May Roam becomes a vertigo-inducing train ride through various cities.

The Shortest Straw is paired with a very apt slot machine showing 8-bit versions of the metal legends playing above flesh and bone versions, while The Call Of Ktulu – dedicated to Cliff Burton – features the titular mythical creature rising out of the water behind the band. It then attacks both Las Vegas and the crowd as planes fly by firing missiles at it. Never mind that Las Vegas is in the middle of the desert – it’s one of the most jaw-dropping, incredible moments of the two nights.

The first ends with a phenomenal rendition of Master Of Puppets, the screen taking everyone in The Sphere to the cemetery on the cover of the album from which that song takes its name, and which builds up after thousands of gravestones fall from the infinite sky above. The band members appear onscreen inside those gravestones as they play out this finale, the real life versions ant-sized in comparison, and it feels, as it does at numerous points throughout the evening, that you’re actually inside the song.

The second night, two days later, begins in exactly the same way as the first – in that calm landscape with its makeshift graves – before the band launch into a powerful Blackened, immediately followed by the high-octane Fuel. It’s a boisterous beginning and sets the tone for a second night that’s much more like an actual gig compared to the larger than life experience of the first. That’s not to say those moments don’t exist. They do – in the mesmerising scene that accompanies King Nothing and the disturbing, unsettling visuals of Welcome Home (Sanitarium), as well as in The Outlaw Torn and its visions of apocalyptic dystopia. The latter ends with the audience sinking into a whirlpool, and it actually really feels like that’s what’s happening.

Yet much of the second night also takes the shape more of an actual gig than the first. The band leave the stage more frequently, there are more videos of them performing on that vast screen, and it feels like they’re playing more to and for the crowd than the night before, rather than soundtracking the visuals. It makes for a very different experience, a worthy counterpart (and sequel of sorts) to the first night.

That they leave the stage noticeably more often the second night, too, which – whether by design or otherwise – breaks the spell of that immersive Sphere experience somewhat. That only really happens on the first night with Nothing Else Matters, because its rudimentary graphics look like a ’90s computer screensaver. Still, the song and performance are powerful and beautiful enough to cast their own spell.

The immersive aspect returns with a vengeance, first when they run through For Whom The Bell Tolls and One back-to-back amidst stunning visuals that reveal the horrors of war, and then, during the grand finale of Enter Sandman, when a low-hanging moon etched with the Metallica M appears above band and crowd. It slowly but steadily swells until, at the end of the song, it seems to fill the entire Sphere so that you can almost reach out and touch it.

Clearly, then, these aren’t normal concerts. And though the second night comes off more like a regular gig than the first, there are still a plethora of breathtaking moments that take it into the realm of the extraordinary. Combined, both evenings make for a fascinating, phenomenal and unique experience that’s quite unlike anything else. Suffice to say that, long after they conquered the globe, Metallica have now also conquered The Sphere.

James Hetfield is right – for modern technology and old guys playing loud music, this really is pretty fucking awesome.

Metallica's Sphere residency continues until March 13, 2027.

Metallica “Life Burns Faster,” Night One set list:

“Battery”
“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”
Kirk Hammett and Rob Trujillo “Doodle”
“Nothing Else Matters”
“The Call of Ktulu”
“Lux Æterna”
“Ride the Lightning”
“The Memory Remains”
“Seek & Destroy”
“Master of Puppets”
 

Night Two set list:

“Blackened”
“Fuel”
“Leper Messiah”
“Devil’s Dance”
“72 Seasons”
“King Nothing”
“Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”
“The Outlaw Torn”
Kirk Hammett and Rob Trujillo “Doodle”
“The Unforgiven”
“Orion”
“Hardwired”
“Whiskey in the Jar”
“For Whom the Bell Tolls”
“One”
“Enter Sandman”