Since last year, Metallica have been on their M72 World Tour, which has them doing “No Repeat Weekends” in each city, meaning they play two nights with different sets and different openers each night. That tour hit Chicago’s Soldier Field this past weekend (Friday, August 9 and Sunday, August 11), with Pantera and Mammoth WVH opening night one and Five Finger Death Punch and Ice Nine Kills opening night two. They played plenty of classics throughout both nights and some new stuff too, including three songs each night from the tour’s namesake, Metallica’s 2023 album 72 Seasons. Here’s more from Bob Gendron’s review for Chicago Tribune:
On Friday, [they played] selections from the band’s initial seven studio LPs and a focus on work dating from 1984 to 1991. Metallica bypassed a quarter-century’s worth of material — or, anything recorded between 1998 and last year’s “72 Seasons” album. The quartet made a strong case for two of the three tracks it played from the latter record, with a speed-racing rendition of the haunted title track goosed by Hetfield’s furious down strokes and the ping-ponging gait of “Shadows Follow” paralleling the running behavior cited in the song.
Metallica thrived when venturing into dark places. “Blackened” whipped into a dervish, its violence and viscousness illustrative of the 1988 song’s prophetic themes of environmental destruction and wartime fallout. The steel-toed boot heel of “Sad But True” ground hope into submission with massive riffs doubling as a sledgehammer slamming into an anvil and painful words biting into the subconscious. Grimmer still, an ominous “Harvester of Sorrow” slithered and stomped as its protagonist inflicted increasing degrees of madness, cruelty and terror upon victims.
Agitated and gruff, Hetfield’s bare-knuckled deliveries tore down the self-righteous and left everyone at his mercy. Taking the form of taunts, threats, tremors, grunts, commands and maniacal cackles, they harkened to an era before the 61-year-old began incorporating crooning into his repertoire. Even as microphone duties restrained his movements during vocal segments, he joined Hammett and Trujillo in freely roaming the stage. Members frequently saw themselves separated by hundreds of feet or at opposite ends from one another, or traded off hanging around near Ulrich.
Read more at Chicago Tribune and find more pics of night one by Christian Heinzel below, along with both nights’ setlists and some fan-shot videos.
Metallica @ Soldier Field – 8/9/24 Setlist (via)
Creeping Death
Harvester of Sorrow
Holier Than Thou
King Nothing
72 Seasons
If Darkness Had a Son (followed by “Chi Town Gangster” doodle from Kirk & Rob)
Fade to Black
Shadows Follow
Orion
Nothing Else Matters (with extended Kirk intro)
Sad but True
Blackened
Fuel
Seek & Destroy
Master of Puppets
Metallica @ Soldier Field – 8/11/24 Setlist (via)
Whiplash
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ride the Lightning
Until It Sleeps
Lux Æterna
Screaming Suicide (Followed by Ministry’s “Just One Fix” doodle by Kirk & Rob)
The Day That Never Comes
Wherever I May Roam
The Call of Ktulu (Dedicated to Cliff Burton)
The Unforgiven
Inamorata (Dedicated to eight year old fan in Make-A-Wish program)
Fight Fire With Fire
Moth Into Flame
One
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