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Metallica open Sphere residency with ...And Justice for All, its first live play since 2014

Metallica opened their 24-show Las Vegas Sphere residency, Life Burns Faster, on October 1, 2026, with a 16-song set that included "...And Justice for All" for the first time since August 2014. Under the band's No Repeat Weekend rule, the next show plays none of the same songs.

By Riffiter

Photo: Tomás Del Coro, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Metallica opened their Las Vegas Sphere residency, Life Burns Faster, on Thursday, October 1, 2026. The 16-song set ran 2 hours 15 minutes, and its headline moment came in the middle: "...And Justice for All", played live for the first time since August 9, 2014, according to setlist.fm as quoted by NME.

A setlist built around a rule

The show opened with "Battery", the first time since 2014 the band started a show with it. "Now That We're Dead" came back for the first time since September 2021. The full order was Battery, Creeping Death, Now That We're Dead, Sad But True, The Shortest Straw, Wherever I May Roam, The Day That Never Comes, ...And Justice for All, Nothing Else Matters, The Call of Ktulu, Lux Æterna, Ride the Lightning, The Memory Remains, Seek & Destroy and Master of Puppets, with a Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo instrumental between Justice and Nothing Else Matters.

Four of the band's biggest songs were not played: Enter Sandman, One, Fade to Black and For Whom the Bell Tolls. That is the No Repeat Weekend rule the band started on the M72 tour in 2023. The Thursday and Saturday shows of each weekend share no songs, so Saturday's show cannot repeat any of the 16 from night one.

Metallica on stage in Warsaw in 2024
Metallica at the end of their show at PGE Narodowy, Warsaw, on July 7, 2024, on the M72 tour. Photo: Iron.secrets, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

24 nights to March

The residency has 24 shows, every Thursday and Saturday: ten in October and November 2026, then fourteen from January 28 to March 13, 2027. It started as eight dates and was extended in stages.

Lars Ulrich said the idea came at U2's opening night at the Sphere on September 29, 2023: "About 12 seconds into the opening night of Sphere with U2 back in '23, I thought 'We have to do this.'" U2 went on to play 40 shows there. Dead & Company, Phish, the Eagles and Kenny Chesney followed.

Inside the Sphere during a U2 show in February 2024
Inside the Sphere during U2's residency, February 7, 2024. Photo: Raymond Shobe, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What the screen showed

Per Las Vegas Weekly, the first songs used the screen as a mirror, showing the crowd back to itself. "Wherever I May Roam" became a rollercoaster past world landmarks that ended at the Sphere itself. For "...And Justice for All", the screen showed the statue from the album cover, which the band calls Doris, in a prison yard with figures behind bars. "The Call of Ktulu" brought a giant Cthulhu, and James Hetfield dedicated it to Cliff Burton: "In honor of our fallen brother. We love you."

Before "Seek & Destroy", Hetfield joked: "We wrote this when we were little girls. We were like 12 years old, and now we're like 112."

The setlist leaned on the early records. Six of the 16 songs came from Ride the Lightning (1984) and Master of Puppets (1986), and three from the 1991 Black Album.

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