Metallica opened its Las Vegas Sphere residency with an 18-song set and a giant three-dimensional Cthulhu crawling across the venue's wraparound screen. This is what happens when the garage band from Kill 'Em All survives long enough to receive the world's largest haunted screensaver.
The band began with “Battery” and drew from its 1983 debut through 2023's 72 Seasons. Sphere's curved display surrounded the four musicians with animated crosses, fire, collapsing structures and monsters large enough to make a stadium video board file for unemployment.
The spectacle still served the catalog
Metallica included standards such as “Creeping Death,” “Ride the Lightning,” “Nothing Else Matters,” “Seek & Destroy” and “Master of Puppets.” “The Call of Ktulu” included a tribute to late bassist Cliff Burton alongside the enormous tentacled visual.
The show demonstrated the risk of Sphere productions: technology can overwhelm performers. Metallica's solution was characteristically subtle—play louder and make the nightmare creature bigger.
Thrash metal has become premium architecture
The band once represented dangerous youth culture to nervous parents. Four decades later, those teenagers are booking hotel packages and checking whether the 10 p.m. show offers accessible seating.
Pitchfork reported on the October 1 residency opener. Metallica did not abandon its scale or menace; it simply acquired enough production budget to render the album-cover monster in municipal dimensions.
Facts first. Side-eye included.
DJF separates what is confirmed from what is claimed—and tells you why this particular mess is worth your time.
Max Rewind
Gen X Files & Pop-Culture ArchaeologyMax remembers when television ended at midnight, concert tickets were affordable, and nobody called a reboot “content.” He digs through the culture we survived.
“Rewind it, verify it, and please stop remaking everything.”