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Dust off your leather jacket and get your devil horns ready.
Metallica, one of the most celebrated and influential acts in metal history, are hitting the road for a massive world tour that includes two stops in Canada.
The metal band dropped a new single on Monday titled “Lux Æterna” along with a date for the group’s 12th studio album release.
Set for April 14, 2023, “72 Seasons” will be Metallica’s first album in over six years. The heavy metal band’s 2016 album, “Hardwired… to Self Destruct,” topped the charts in 57 countries, and became their sixth consecutive studio album to debut at number one on the US Billboard 200.
The new album will feature 12 tracks and more than 77 minutes of new music produced by Greg Fidelman, along with the band’s lead singer James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich.
Metallica’s official music video for “Lux Æterna,” from the album “72 Seasons” available April 14th, 2023.
The single was accompanied by a new music video, which the band’s website claims was “one of the coolest we’ve ever made” directed by Tim Saccenti in Los Angeles and used “cutting-edge technology” to capture the band’s performance.
“72 seasons. The first 18 years of our lives that form our true or false selves. The concept that we were told ‘who we are’ by our parents. A possible pigeonholing around what kind of personality we are,” said Hetfield in a written statement on the band’s site of the new album’s title.
This summer, Metallica’s 1986 anthem “Master of Puppets” appeared in an episode of the Netflix show “Stranger Things.” In the weeks that followed, the track racked up millions of streams on Spotify, and re-entered the US Billboard chart for the first time since its release over 35 years ago.
“I think the most interesting part of this is the continued study of those core beliefs and how it affects our perception of the world today. Much of our adult experience is re-enactment or reaction to these childhood experiences. Prisoners of childhood or breaking free of those bondages we carry,” Hetfield said.
The band also announced an “M72 Tour” kicking off next year with 46 shows in 22 cities around the globe. Metallica will open the tour on April 27, 2023 and play two shows in Amsterdam, making their way around Europe for the first leg.
They will play two nights in each city with two different setlists each night. The tour will feature a rotating cast of openers including Pantera, Five Finger Death Punch, Architects, Mammoth WVH, Ice Nine Kills, Volbeat and Greta Van Fleet.
Toronto fans will have to plan a trip out of the city. Metallica only has two announced stops so far in Canada, playing Stade Olympique in Montreal on Aug. 11 and 13, 2023 and Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton on Aug. 23 and 25, 2024.
The band will close the world tour in Mexico City on Sept. 29, 2024. Pre-sales for the concert tickets will begin Wednesday, Nov. 30
The complete track listing will include:
72 Seasons
Shadows Follow
Screaming Suicide
Sleepwalk My Life Away
You Must Burn!
Lux Æterna
Crown of Barbed Wire
Chasing Light
If Darkness Had a Son
Too Far Gone?
Room of Mirrors
Inamorata
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