Check out Metallica’s first of two headlining performances at Download Festival 2023

At this year’s Download Festival 2023, Metallica performed the first of their two headlining performances. See the complete set list and video of the event below.

As previously stated, the two sets will each include songs from their entire four-decade catalog, and no two songs will be performed again, allowing for the appearance of certain rarely performed classics.

This was demonstrated by their performance last night, which featured songs from their most recent studio album 72 Seasons, including “Lux terna,” “Screaming Suicide,” and “Sleepwalk My Life Away,” as well as some of their most well-known songs, such as “Sad But True,” “Seek & Destroy,” and “Leper Messiah.”

James Hetfield and company made room for less-played songs by leaving off some of their biggest successes, such as “Enter Sandman,” “One,” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” which are likely scheduled to appear tomorrow night (June 10). This includes the band opening the 16-song repertoire with the heartfelt 2008 lament “The Day That Never Comes” as well as the sadly underappreciated 1984 single “Creeping Death.”

The instrumental fan favorite “Orion” and the furious thrash song “Fuel” were other standouts. They also played ‘Master Of Puppets’ as the show’s encore, a song that recently saw a mainstream comeback as a result of its inclusion in the popular Netflix series Stranger Things. Below is a video from the performance as well as the whole setlist.

Metallica’s setlist was:

1. Creeping Death
2. Harvester of Sorrow
3. Leper Messiah
4. King Nothing
5. Lux Æterna
6. Screaming Suicide
7. Fade to Black
8. Sleepwalk My Life Away
9. Orion
10. Nothing Else Matters
11. Sad but True
12. The Day That Never Comes
13. Blackened
14. Fuel
15. Seek & Destroy
16. Master of Puppets

Bring Me The Horizon, who will perform tonight (June 9), and Slipknot, who will cap the festival on Sunday (June 11), are two further acts scheduled to headline this year’s Download festival.

The festival will celebrate its twentieth anniversary in 2023, and in honor of the occasion, it will last four days rather than the customary three.

Over 50 performers, including Ghost, Evanescence, The Distillers, Placebo, and Architects, were revealed as part of the roster in November. Halestorm, Alter Bridge, Neck Deep, Bob Vylan, Carcass, Five Finger Death Punch, Jinjer, Coheed and Cambria, Electric Callboy, Hot Milk, and The Amity Affliction were among the other artists that were later revealed in February.

The Download Festival’s executive director, Andy Copping, stated last year when discussing the festival’s varied lineup, particularly the number of female acts, with NME: “All festivals need to look at how diverse they are. Although there are still a lot of amazing female artists to discover, it’s inspiring to see how far we’ve come in our efforts over the years.

“Perhaps we might assist in giving them a platform. Even though we have come a long way from where we started, we still aspire to get better every year. The NME review of Download 2022 can be found here.

In other Metallica news, the heavy metal quartet released their 11th studio album, “72 Seasons,” in April. The band also began their massive, two-year tour with a concert in Amsterdam.

The band was praised by NME as “still the greatest heavy metal band around” in a four-star review of the debut performance.

James Hetfield’s grin is as big as it can be as he begins the first scorching solo, and on the other side of the stage, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo have managed to form a two-person circle pit. The band isn’t showing any signs of first-night jitters, it said.

“Metallica has always been a band that people turn to for heavy music, but there’s a fresh buzz surrounding them right now. The unexpected, bold, and joyful performance tonight matches that enthusiasm in every way.