Show Review, Photos: Metallica Exhilarate Bay Area On Night One of 'M72' Tour in Santa Clara
Metallica
w/ Limp Bizkit, Ice Nine Kills
Levi’s Stadium
Santa Clara, CA
June 20th, 2025
Review and Photos by Jared Stossel
It would be an understatement to use the phrase “Metallica is a good band.” It would even be an understatement to say that “Metallica is a great band”. Metallica is undoubtedly one of the best bands on the face of the planet. Music is subjective, as all art is, but there is no way you can watch these four guys continue to get up on a stadium grandstand, in what should be decades well past their prime, and play a perfect, two-hour show effortlessly, and not believe that they are one of the best in the world. The Bay Area-based heavy metal titans have been traversing the globe for the last few years on their “M72 World Tour”, named for their most recent effort, 72 Seasons. After years of playing festivals like Aftershock and Outside Lands in place of their own solo shows, the four-piece act brought a homecoming show for the ages to Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium, the first of a two-night stand that proved why they are one of the world’s biggest and best musical acts.
Each night of this two-night stand is set to feature a different set list (aka “No Repeat Weekend), spanning the band’s decades-long catalog of hits and deep cuts, along with an eclectic lineup of opening acts to kick off the evening. On Friday night in Santa Clara, the show was opened by two distinct yet excellent acts on the heavy metal spectrum. Theatrical rockers Ice Nine Kills, whom I’ve had the pleasure of seeing several times before, opened the festivities with their unique edition of horror-laden metalcore. Vocalist Spencer Charnas is a natural frontman, and even when he’s performing in a room three times the size of the venues they’re used to headlining, he is a captivating presence. The stage props that the band has been utilizing on their most recent tours don’t always work in a large stadium setting, and those moments didn’t always produce the same effect that they would in a more intimate setting. Even so, it was still wildly entertaining to watch the band power through a marathon run of tracks that covered horror classics like The Evil Dead, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Silence of The Lambs. They are one of the most promising acts in our scene right now.
The main support set was provided by none other than Limp Bizkit. The Fred Durst-fronted act has always been a polarizing presence in the metal community, given their penchant for further catapulting the rap/rock nu-metal scene that dominated pop culture in the late nineties and early aughts. It is a far cry from the kind of metal music that Metallica and their contemporaries were churning out in the eighties and nineties during their ascendency, yet you would never have been able to tell that there was any kind of discrepancy between fan bases. The five-piece act was met with thunderous applause as they took the stadium stage and ran full speed through a hit-laden set, mainly pulling songs from 1999’s Significant Other and 2000’s Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water.
Limp Bizkit might very well be one of the weirdest bands out there, but only they can deliver on the weirdness that they promise in such an endearing and fun way. At one moment, DJ Lethal is playing George Michael’s “Careless Whisper”; in the next breath, guitarist Wes Borland, donned head to toe in a gaudy ensemble that changes every show, is playing the opening chords to a song like “Break Stuff”, the amplifier tone ripping through the air like a saw cutting through bone as a thousand frat boys open up a circle pit mere feet away from me. Durst smiles and charismatically walks the entire “stage in the round”, eliciting positive reactions from everyone in the crowd while affectionately referring to those up in the highest bleachers as “the Vitamin D section” as the sun blares down on them. They jump from moment to moment throughout their set constantly; I loved every second of it.
By the time it's almost 9:00, the stadium is completely packed and filled with audience members doing the wave. The crowd roars as the lights go down and composer Ennio Morricone’s “The Ecstasy of Gold” blares over the speakers, complete with film clips of The Good, The Bad And The Ugly playing overhead. The members of Metallica become visible, and the roar becomes deafening as they make their way along the 360-degree stage, launching into “Creeping Death”, turning what initially was an ordinary metal show into an epic homecoming, a massive showcase for one of today’s greatest living bands.
What followed “Creeping Death” was a two-hour set that found the band pulling material from almost every album in their catalog, ranging from fan-favorite hits like “Master of Puppets”, “Fuel”, and “Sad But True”, to deeper cuts like “Cyanide” and “King Nothing”, and newer additions like “72 Seasons” and “If Darkness Had A Son”. Drummer Lars Ulrich, guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield, guitarist Kirk Hammett, and bassist Robert Trujillo delivered a set for the ages, utilzing every inch of the massive stage, encircled around the sprawling GA pit in the center of the stadium dubbed “The Snakepit”. “Oh my god, I have the best job in the world”, Hetfield muses to the audience with a smile in between songs as the audience screams for more.
I could sit here and name off every song that they played over those two hours: the mosh-pit inducing “Hit The Lights” and “Battery”, the haunting power-metal ballad that is “Nothing Else Matters”, the powerhouse instrumental of “Orion”, the fire-breathing intensity of “Fuel”, or the masterpiece closer that is “Master of Puppets”. No matter which performance I recollect, the common thread amongst all of them is the excellence of Metallica’s musicality. They are so in-tune with one another, even as they’re spread out a hundred feet away from one another. Every selection, whether a well-known hit or a deeper cut, was an absolute treat.
When I was thirteen, I remember sitting in the La-Z-Boy recliner in my family’s living room late at night, as a random episode of Saturday Night Live would play. During commercial breaks, I would scroll through my iPod. I was just starting to get into metal, and I had downloaded a handful of singles from artists like Dragonforce, Iron Maiden, Slipknot, you name it. Metallica was on that list, and for months, I would sit there and listen to “Master of Puppets” and “Battery” over and over, enthralling myself in this newly discovered corner of the music world. It is surreal to me that nearly twenty years later, I am continuing to see and write about a band that has powerfully stood the test of time, leaping out of my earbuds and onto a stage the size of a football field directly in front of me. I have seen Metallica a handful of times since 2007, but there was something really special about this particular show.
Night two can’t come soon enough.
Metallica will perform again this Sunday, June 22nd, 2025 at Levi’s Stadium with support from Pantera and Suicidal Tendencies. For more information and tickets, click here.
Metallica Set List
Creeping Death
Harvester of Sorrow
Hit The Lights
King Nothing
72 Seasons
If Darkness Had A Son
(Kirk and Rob Doodle/Improvise)
The Day That Never Comes
Cyanide
Orion
Nothing Else Matters
Sad But True
Battery
Fuel
Seek & Destroy
Master of Puppets
