Live Report: Metallica turn the Aviva into a midsummer coliseum, for a thunderous, communal, flame-belching celebration of riffs, ritual and rock’n’roll endurance

Metallica’s current run, the M72 World Tour, built around their 2023 album 72 Seasons, is now in its 2026 European and U.K. stretch, with recent and upcoming dates including Dublin’s Aviva Stadium, Glasgow’s Hampden Park, Cardiff’s Principality Stadium and London Stadium. The central conceit is the 'No Repeat Weekend' - in selected cities, Metallica play two nights with two different set lists, turning the usual stadium stop into a miniature residency.

For three days now, the Metallica massive (over 100,000 of them) has descended on old Dublin town. Simply put, Metallica fans are wonderfully different. More travelling commune than mere audience - strangers greeting strangers by the ancient code of the tour T-shirt, parents inducting children into the ancient sound, old thrashers stood beside teenage converts. True music fans, they are cultish in their devotion, beautiful with it and they are everywhere across the city. Down on the river, the Grand Social is Metallica HQ - stuffed with memorabilia, running film screenings and rather marvellously hosting air-guitar competitions and heavy metal karaoke. Earlier in the weekend, around the corner at The Academy, Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett waxed lyrical about his mammoth guitar collection while further up the Liffey, a pop-up shop at the Convention Centre is flogging the kitchen sink of Metallica merch. On giant screens inside the Aviva Stadium, even Molly Malone has been Metallicised – stag horned, carting mussels and skulls.

It’s a beyond beautiful mid-summer’s evening, Mediterranean warm and against that backdrop Metallica majestically take the stage – a balm to even the most jaded gig-goer.

A huge circular stage sits in the middle of the stadium rather than at one end, with the crowd wrapped around it on all sides. The famous Snake Pit is in the middle, doughnut style, so fans are inside the ring while the band moves around the outer stage. The drums are not fixed in one spot either, appearing in different positions during the show, helping each side of the stadium feel, at some point, like the front row.

The eight gargantuan towers that surround the stage are peppered with giant screens, speakers and lights beaming archival footage of the band mixed with live images of tonight’s waiting congregation. Suddenly they light up with the kooky graveyard scene from Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly complete with Ennio Morricone’s iconic ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’. Then to the tune of AC/DC’s ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll)’, Kirk Hammet and bassist Robert Trujiillo make their way casually to the stage, like they are simply ambling out for a pint, followed nonchalantly by drummer Lars Ulrich and then frontman James Hetfield.

Into ‘Whiplash’ they hurl. It’s mighty. ‘For Whom the Bell Toll’s has tens of thousands of defiant fists hammering the air, from the pit to the eaves of this cauldron now of a stadium. Then ‘Ride the Lightning’ and it strikes you that performing the set like this – there is nothing on the stage except the four Metallica men, the space completely devoid of speakers, stacks or standard gig paraphernalia – takes major cojones. But then that’s something this band never lacked.

Wild mosh-pits break out across the mass. They appear chaotic, but they are good-natured too, fans minding one another in the churn. ‘Until It Sleeps’ shifts gears, moving from high-speed attack to melodic grunge, before Lars pummels the absolute shite out of his drum kit for newer cuts ‘Lux Æterna’ and ‘Screaming Suicide’.

That stage is a magic trick -the band disappearing, then reappearing, like now it’s just Kirk and Robert gamely tackling ‘Dirty Old Town’; then the full band, standing at the colossal four points of the stage, half a football field apart, hammering through the power ballad ‘Fade to Black’ and fresh as a daisy ‘Wherever I May Roam’, its death-knell groove immaculately superb.

Metallica Night 2 Credit: Peter O'Hanlon

‘The Call of Ktulu’ has a triangle of axemen circling Ulrich’s kit, intimate like they are in rehearsal, rather than exposed to 50,ooo delirious fans. Above the din, in a classy touch, Hetfield calls out to Cliff Burton, their original, now almost mythical, forever young bassist. Then comes ‘The Unforgiven’, iconic as ever, Hammett’s solo still so damn good and into ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ we plough.

By now, the band are like a runaway freight train, tracking through ‘Blackened’, ‘Moth Into Flame’ and ‘One’ with the stage firing colossal flames into the air and bolts of lightening from its arse, the music strafing the stadium like a Gatling gun before giant beach balls cascade down on the audience and the band bring the whole thundering carnival to crescendo with ‘Enter Sandman’.

Metallica, Abú!