Metallica played their first show of 2025 on Saturday night (April 19th), performing a career-spanning set at the JMA Wireless Dome in Syracuse, New York.
They Syracuse concert was one of several single-night-only shows on this spring North American run (tickets available here), as opposed to the “no repeat weekends” they’ve been playing over two nights in most cities on this ongoing “M72 World Tour.” That meant that fans at Saturday’s gig got elements of both sets in one night.
Get Last-Minute Metallica Tickets Here
Metallica’s 16-song set represented nine of their 10 studio albums (not counting Lulu, their 2011 collaboration with Lou Reed), as they played songs from every studio LP except 2003’s St. Anger.
Related Video
Frontman James Hetfield and company launched the set with a 1-2 punch from 1984’s Ride the Lightning: “Creeping Death” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” The band played three songs from 1991 self-titled effort, aka “The Black Album,” including “Nothing Else Matters,” “Sad but True,” and the set-closing “Enter Sandman.”
Other favorites throughout the evening included “Hit the Lights,” “Fuel,” “Seek & Destroy,” “One,” and “Master of Puppets.” Guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo played Death Magnetic‘s “Broken, Beat & Scarred” as their improvised doodle of the night.
The tour continues with a two-night stand in Toronto this Thursday (April 24th) and Saturday (April 26th), and runs through two shows in Denver (June 27th and 29th). Other cities where Metallica are playing single-night-only concerts include Blacksburg, Virginia; Landover, Maryland; Atlanta, Georgia; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Houston, Texas.
Both James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett made Consequence‘s recent list of the 100 Best Guitarists of All Time, plus Hammett provided us with an exclusive list of 11 album he thinks every guitarist should own.
See fan-filmed video footage and the setlist from the tour kickoff in Syracuse below.
Setlist:
Creeping Death
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Hit the Lights
King Nothing
Lux Æterna
Screaming Suicide
Broken, Beat & Scarred (Kirk and Rob Doodle)
The Day That Never Comes
Fuel (James solo Helping Hands intro into regular arrangement)
Orion
Nothing Else Matters
Sad but True
One
Seek & Destroy
Master of Puppets
Enter Sandman
Content shared from consequence.net.