Metallica's record-breaking Cardiff show re-wrote the rulebook on growing old
When Metallica frontman James Hetfield asks Cardiff’s Principality Stadium who among us is seeing the band for the first time, it was no surprise to see a lot of horn hand symbols raised. For the 45 years Metallica have been a band, they haven’t played in Wales for the last 30.
Drummer Lars Ulrich was in the audience here for the opening night of Oasis’s 2025 tour – and thanks to their in-the-round staging, Metallica attracted an even bigger crowd than the Gallaghers did. The stadium claims the show has officially set a new record as the largest concert ever held in Wales, no small feat when the venue has also hosted Taylor Swift’s gargantuan Eras Tour and previous 2022 record-breaker Ed Sheeran.
On concert day (Sunday 28 June), it seemed like every other person in Cardiff was wearing a Metallica T-shirt, with the city’s rock bar Fuel – itself sharing a name with one of the band’s songs – clearly having a busy weekend. Since Metallica’s last Welsh visit (Cardiff International Arena in October 1996), the Californian band has played everywhere from Woodstock 1999 to a 2013 Antarctica concert.
There were no hard feelings from the Welsh about the lengthy absence, and fans in the middle of the ring-shaped stage were clearly enthusiastic. The band’s own enthusiasm led by example – Ulrich mouthed every word of the lyrics as he drummed and Hetfield declared that he has the best job in the world. The singalong to an informal rendition of “Delilah” from bassist Rob Trujillo and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett even showed that a lot of Welsh metal fans clearly have a soft spot for Tom Jones.
The setlist was clearly geared towards the post-1990 material that helped the group conquer stadiums, over their faster early 80s thrash metal. Even if their latest album, 72 Seasons, only got its title track played, songs like “Sad But True” and big rock ballad “Nothing Else Matters” were perfectly restrained to sound massive in the closed-roof stadium. And the 2026 fuel crisis clearly isn’t impacting stage shows – huge pyrotechnics elevated, rather than distracted from, the likes of “Enter Sandman” and “One”.
The earlier songs they did play were the ones built for huge venues. “For Whom The Bell Tolls” and “Seek & Destroy” always had stadium-level power when first played in clubs, the latter oddly playful here as giant beach balls dropped to be bounced around the crowd. There was the sense that Metallica were playing to their own strengths, expanding the scope of songs for venues like this, while never drifting into self-indulgence.
There’s no strict rulebook for growing old gracefully as a heavy metal band, when so many early hard rockers are either no longer alive (Ozzy Osbourne) or branching into other styles (Robert Plant). But if Metallica is writing that rulebook, they are doing so in incredible fashion. The mixture of elder-statesman restraint and still-youthful enthusiasm showed why Metallica do hard rock live on a scale few others – and evidently, no one else in Welsh concert history – has ever managed.