Review: Metallica at Optus Stadium
Metallica at Optus Stadium
w/ Evanescence, Suicidal Tendencies
Saturday, November 1, 2025
There was no question where Perth’s metal fans were on Saturday night as Optus Stadium kicked off its summer run of shows in style, playing host to the inimitable Metallica. The event felt like it scooped up every punter in the state, and doubtlessly many from interstate or even overseas, as the sea of fans at the show’s peak must have hit the 60,000 mark in what proved a gargantuan turnout. The venue was more than up to the task, with an impressive stage layout which bookended the band’s logo lettering across the stage’s video screens and featured a runway and closed ‘snake pit’ near the stage which allowed the performers to interact with lucky fans.
The attention to detail extended to between-show signage, which cleverly namechecked the band’s repertoire, and the curated music between sets, which namechecked all the band’s influences from Black Sabbath through to more obscure cuts by NWOBHM stalwarts such as Diamond Head. Having last played Perth in 2013, the setup demonstrated how much Metallica have been missed.
It didn’t hurt that two heavy music giants opened proceedings either. First up were Suicidal Tendencies (ST), 80s thrash contemporaries of Metallica and legends in their own right. One would think their punk-inflected ‘crossover thrash’ sound is the domain of the young, but frontman and founder Mike Muir laid this claim to rest with a blistering set that bottled the band’s ferocious energy by pairing his inimitably unbridled energy against a superb rhythm section of speed demon drums and clattering distorted bass.
Muir had on his trademark look (an American sports jersey, with shorts mistakeable for more Aus-appropriate boardies), and he commanded both stage and crowd as he ripped through such classics as You Won’t Bring Me Down, Institutionalized, Send Me Your Money and closer Pledge Your Allegiance. Though ST’s music can be tongue-in-cheek (“All I wanted was a Pepsi!”), a message of independence, individuality and grit underpins it all, and Muir embodied this throughout with his heart firmly on sleeve. To be playing like this across a 40+ year career and counting, Muir and ST certainly walk the walk.
Evanescence followed with a stellar set that countered ST’s ragged emotion with a more polished but equally powerful masterclass in dynamics. They were an interesting but clever support choice: riding the nu metal wave in the mid-2000s, Evanescence laid classically influenced and gothic tones atop heavy grooves and were many Millennial fans’ entry into heavier music and the artists that Evanescence now shared the stage with. Spooky fog and monochrome video displays were the order of the day in a haunting set that balanced light against dark and the ethereal against the heavy.
Shout out to vocalist and founder Amy Lee, whose instantly recognisable vocals swooped and dived with pitch-perfect precision live, balancing so well against the instruments that the songs sounded plucked straight from the record. Great songs they were also. Generational touchstone Bring Me To Life brought the house down to close the set, but the band balanced new and older material, with Lithium and Going Under representing the old guard and newer tracks such as Use My Voice and The Game Is Over coming alive and highlighting the hefty metal crunch that the band are also capable of.
After a longer wait, Metallica came on just before 9pm. Metallica are not so much a band as an institution, emerging from the milieu of the 80s thrash scene—and indeed the birth of metal as we know it today—as the undisputed head of American metal and, from their self-titled ‘black album’ onwards, the biggest heavy band in the world. Trends in heavy music have come and gone, with Metallica tracing them to varied success through the mid-nineties to oughts, but the last fifteen years have been a very solid period for the band, with releases that capture the 80s thrash sounds they pioneered.
The only knock, then, on the over two hours of music that followed was the under-representation of this material. The M72 tour is named after latest release, 72 Seasons, an hour-plus slab of unabashed thrash with particular love paid to the NWOBHM-influenced speed metal that birthed the band’s sound. Lone inclusion Lux Æterna is one of the album’s shortest and most furious tracks, and it exploded into life on the night, but other killer tracks like You Must Burn or grand closer Inamorata would not have gone amiss.
This is hardly a complaint, though, when what remained was an excellently sequenced trip through the best back catalogue in metal, balancing thrashers against the lyrical and heavy-hitting material that traced Metallica’s rise to the top. Long Way to the Top soundtracked a love letter to prior Australian tours before a Sergio Leone/Ennio Morricone excerpt paved the way for the perfect opener in Creeping Death, which struck a balance between speed and spectacle. Metallica’s earliest and arguably best bit of arena-ready songwriting came early in the piece as For Whom the Bell Tolls followed, accompanied by affecting visuals depicting the Spanish Civil War. The visuals on the screens were on point throughout, often favouring a constructivist (think Soviet propaganda art) aesthetic that worked for the dark themes at play.
The headiness took a backseat to some straight-ahead ass-kicking as Holier Than Thou and Fuel packed a powerful one-two punch; the latter kicked things into a higher gear (literally) with imagery of pistons pumping away and literal gouts of flame whose heat could be felt from the stands. The Unforgiven saw Hetfield forsake his Flying V for an acoustic in a perfect rendition of one of Metallica’s most beloved ballads.
The first part of the set concluded with some great audience engagement, with bassist Robert Trujillo hyping the crowd and firstly laying down a riff from thrash influencers Budgie before jamming over Zebra by John Butler Trio. It was a thoughtful bit of local acknowledgement in a set brimming with gratitude. All four members, now in their early 60s, looked great, and James Hetfield seemed genuinely touched by the opportunity to keep touring and expanding the Metallica fanbase as one of metal’s elder statesmen. It truly felt, as he called it, like a family, with people of all ages (and of all levels of Metallica experience) in attendance. A young fan got the spotlight in a particularly fun exchange, flashing devil horns and indicating his age with two fingers, with Hetfield jokingly mistaking him for two rather than eleven years old.
The remainder of the show kicked into gear with a great bit of sequencing that gradually upped the tempo. Latter-day Metallica tracks The Day That Never Comes and Moth Into Flame were given spirited renditions, the latter featuring a powerful wah-wah solo from Kirk Hammett in a show where his chops were on full display. Classic stomper Sad But True was carried off perfectly and gave way to the night’s ‘lighters-up’ moment with Nothing Else Matters, as lasers cut through the arena and Hetfield played a huge solo.
With that it was time for the thrashers, with OG Metallica riff-fest Seek & Destroy kicking things off and a swarm of inflatable balls being released into the crowd. Amid the controlled chaos, the band tore into Lux Æterna and then Master of Puppets, which featured some ripping solos from Hammett. Naturally the epic One closed this run of thrash classics, the band’s performance syncing perfectly with the grim imagery on display in a song whose cinematic sweep is built for the stage, the crowd going wild during its closing section featuring those distinctive machine-gun riffs. Somewhere in the fracas, the balls had mysteriously disappeared.
Of course things had to end with Enter Sandman, which saw the band firing on all cylinders in a song which spoke for itself. In a final show of warmth, there was no encore but instead an extended goodbye, Metallica’s members giving thanks as they marked the end of a show that neither they nor the fans in attendance will soon forget.
MATIJA ZIVKOVIC
Photos by Karen Lowe
