Metallica's return to the Bay Area reminds us the band is still the soundtrack to our apocalypse

San Francisco Chronicle​

23-06-2025

Here we are in 2025, living like it's 1985 all over again as the decisions of an Iranian Ayatollah hang in the news, the threat of nuclear annihilation is a talking point of children too young to understand the weight of that worry and Metallica is playing thrash metal music in the Bay Area.
History doesn't just repeat itself, it mocks our belief that change will come. And then it gives us a double dose of Metallica.
The Bay Area legends that redefined rock 'n' roll played the second night of its Santa Clara stint on Sunday, June 22 — this time with openers Ice Nine Kills and Pantera, and a completely different setlist — filling Levi's Stadium with more devil horn hand gestures than the home of the 49ers has ever seen in a weekend. And just as they did on Friday, June 20, generations came together — grandparents with grandkids, mothers with sons, many wearing Metallica's sharp logo on shirts — to celebrate the graying foursome's return with its sprawling M72 tour, which has the band playing two shows each stop, with various pop-up events in between.
Much has changed — both in the world and the band — since 1985, when Metallica had its coming-out moment by issuing a blistering, monumental set at the Day on the Green festival at Oakland Coliseum. Some of the songs from that August day in the East Bay, captured by MTV, made the decades' journey to Santa Clara — 'Ride the Lightning,' 'For Whom the Bell Tolls,' 'Whiplash' — serving as a fitting memorial to a period that's often lionized as the band's purest era, before it became the biggest rock act on the planet.
But, here's the thing: Though so much of Sunday night felt like a flashback, the moments were never powered by nostalgia. Well, almost.
It's notable because an evening with Journey or Foreigner or Guns N' Roses is going to feel like stepping into a time machine. We welcome the trip, a quick passage through memories conjured by music. The delightful delusions of a time that was never as real or fun as we recall. But these songs from Metallica's early catalog don't play like empty vessels. They're still alive. Still breathing in the cultural fabric of our lives. They haven't changed, but they carry new meaning, shaped by the learned experiences of the band — and our own.
For instance, 'Ride the Lightning,' the third song of the two-hour set. It's such a powerful track, with a sawtooth verse riff that carves out space for a dramatic, almost cinematic bridge — one that feels like the blueprint for countless bands that followed. But the lament about a prisoner facing execution doesn't only exist in the moral landscape of the Reagan era. Today, it plays like the vocalized concerns of Gen Z's sudden nuclear paranoia — 'Flash before my eyes, now it's time to die.' Chilling. And wondrous at the same time.
This is what timeless anthems do. They conform to the space and time in which we exist. Protean missives that carry lessons and wisdom of the past, along with perspectives that can be influenced or informed by the events of the day. 'Ride the Lightning' isn't 'Blowin' in the Wind,' but in purpose, it's a lot closer to Bob Dylan's masterwork than some music snobs might want to admit.
Ditto for 'Welcome Home (Sanitarium).' This psych-ward melodrama, which longs for solitude in a state of constant surveillance, carries one of the band's greatest moments — the eruptive and emotive breakdown that plainly discusses the fear of continuing to be alive in a world without privacy. Sound familiar?
Later in the set, which touched on songs from various eras of Metallica, vocalist James Hetfield didn't need to sing a word for even the band's youngest fans to know 'The Unforgiven' was on tap. Still built of lumberjack-like brawn, even if he's now cracking dad jokes, Hetfield let the picked acoustic notes announce the 'ballad.' They rang out tinny and too loud, but the crowd responded instantly. A fan who appeared to be around 10 years old said with excitement, 'Mom, it's 'Unforgiven.' You have to stand up for 'Unforgiven.'' She did, along with much of the 50,000 in attendance.
It's strange when a lament about aging and perceived irrelevance becomes a song that is celebrated. But that's also what communion is built upon, the shared expression of grief and regret. And in this moment, the adults in the stadium breathed their own remorse and pains into the words that were born in the blood of existence, and remain as red and viscous as ever.
Late in the set Metallica seemed to hide a slick and timely social commentary in a pair of tracks from the band's 1988 '... And Justice for All' album. It was difficult to hear 'Blackened,' a pummelling and precise song about environmental devastation and apparent nuclear winter, without considering the fresh weight of that threat given the United States' recent bombing of Iran. A couple songs later the sampled machine gun bursts and helicopter sounds that introduce 'One,' a Metallica starter drug song for so many, were heavier than they have been in quite some time. The sonic spectre of another potential war in a foreign land stripping the earth of more souls.
Yet, for many singing along, the song didn't seem to feel as heavy as it should. There are lessons in it that we've forgotten. Or maybe never learned.
Which made the coda of the band's grandest hit, 'Enter Sandman,' play like an awkward party bleeding into the pall of unsettling reflection. The stadium shook in recitations of the chorus — 'Exit light, enter night' — and all was well again. The only moment that felt polluted by the trickster essence of nostalgia.
When the giant inflated black and yellow Metallica beach balls descended on the crowd as 'Sandman' played, the poignancy of 'One,' and the night, was over. There's a reason Dylan never had branded 'Masters of War' beach balls kicked into his crowds.
Night 2 Setlist:
'Whiplash'
'For Whom the Bell Tolls'
'Ride the Lightning'
'The Memory Remains'
'Lux Æterna'
'Screaming Suicide'
'Kirk and Rob Doodle' ('Do You Know the Way to San Jose' and 'California Über Alles')
'Welcome Home (Sanitarium)'
'Wherever I May Roam'
'The Call of Ktulu'
'The Unforgiven'
'Whiskey in the Jar'
'Blackened'
'Moth Into Flame'
'One'
'Enter Sandman'