“12 seconds into the opening night with U2, I thought, ‘We have to do this’”: Metallica announces Sphere residency – and they’ll be spared from the issues all other guitar bands have faced so far

Metallica have announced an upcoming residency at the Las Vegas Sphere.

The news comes after months of speculation surrounding the band, with many fans theorizing that Metallica would continue their M72 World Tour with a stint at the world’s most advanced live music venue.

As such, the Life Burns Faster residency is set to kick off in October later this year, and will continue the ‘No Repeat Weekend’ tradition that the M72 tour established. In other words, no songs will be repeated on each Thursday and Saturday through the course of the run.

Unsurprisingly, the eight-date residency is promising to expand Metallica’s live set and push it in all-new directions. In fact, it’s being dubbed as “a wholly unique and entirely new Metallica experience for all who attend – including James, Lars, Kirk and Robert”.

What presumably won’t be new to the band, though, will be the live rigs they take to the Sphere. After all, the Sphere is notorious for its rig requirements, owing to the way the venue has been physically designed. Loud stages with actual tube amps simply don’t work.

It’s proven to be quite the obstacle for guitarists in the past. It prompted Bob Weir to ditch his tube amps for an amp modeler, forced John Mayer to find a workaround to run his regular amp setup, and famously led The Edge to run through Universal Audio UAFX pedals.

Heck, Trey Anastasio – who also had to bury his amps off-stage for Phish's residency at the venue – once said it was impossible to play with onstage amps at the Sphere.

Metallica won’t face such issues, though. As a band that has already been converted to an all-digital live setup (they switched to Axe-Fx around 2013), they should have no problem with inserting their existing live setup into the Sphere’s notoriously quiet stage.

Whatever the case, Life Burns Faster has become a long time coming, and the seeds of the residency were sown during the venue’s opening night.

“About 12 seconds into the opening night of Sphere with U2 back in ’23, I thought, ‘We have to do this, it’s completely uncharted territory!’” ’Tallica drummer Lars Ulrich says.

“This residency gives us another chance to reinvent how we interact with our fans in a live setting. We are beyond excited to share this with the world in six months’ time, and way fuckin’ psyched to go next level!”

Life Burns Faster kicks off on October 1, with further dates slated for 3, 15, 17, 22, 24, 29 and 31 of that month. Tickets will go on sale on March 6 at 10am PT.

To register for tickets and for more info in the meantime, head over to Metallica’s website.