Metallica surprised the audience at Kentucky’s Louder Than Life Festival over the weekend by playing the entirety of their 1991 self-titled album (aka The Black Album).
Metallica are currently on the road across the USA. This past weekend the band played two headline sets at Louder Than Life in Louisville, Kentucky. The first show, on Friday, 24th September, featured a fairly standard setlist including tracks from Ride the Lightning, Kill ‘Em All, Master of Puppets, Reload, …And Justice For All and some of the their more recent records.
For their second performance, on Sunday, 26th September, the band played a three-song warm-up before proceeding to perform all 12 songs from The Black Album in reverse order. That means they got going with ‘The Struggle Within’; ‘Nothing Else Matter’s appeared fourth in the sequence; and they brought it home strong with ‘Sad But True’ and ‘Enter Sandman’.
The Black Album turned 30 years old in August. In early September, Metallica oversaw the release of The Metallica Blacklist compilation—a four-disc, 53-song album including covers from the likes of Mac DeMarco, Miley Cyrus, Phoebe Bridgers, Weezer, St. Vincent and The Chats.
Take a look at Metallica’s performance of The Black Album‘s ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ below.
