Metallica’s “Lux Æterna” Ignites Howard Stern’s Studio: A 2023 Performance That Rekindled the Band’s Eternal Light
The morning of April 12, 2023, found Metallica hauling their full-tilt live rig into SiriusXM’s Los Angeles garage for a special broadcast of The Howard Stern Show. Two days before the world would hear their long-anticipated 72 Seasons LP, the quartet let “Lux Æterna” roar across satellite radio and YouTube, giving fans a first taste of the record in the most intimate of settings—even as millions listened in real time.
Howard Stern has hosted everyone from Paul McCartney to Lady Gaga, yet the sight of James Hetfield gripping his snake-pit mic stand while Lars Ulrich’s toms rattled the studio glass felt like a flashback to shock-jock radio’s rowdiest era. In that cramped room, Stern’s trademark cackle blended with guitar feedback, turning the broadcast into an impromptu club gig that harked back to the sweaty Bay Area dives where Metallica forged their sound four decades earlier.
“Lux Æterna” itself carried plenty of historical heft. Written by Hetfield and Ulrich but produced with Greg Fidelman, the single channels the band’s earliest influences—Diamond Head, Motörhead, the entire NWOBHM surge—while clocking a lean three minutes and twenty-five seconds, their punchiest lead single since “Fuel.” Its studio release the previous November had already rocketed to number one on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, matching the eleven-week run of their 1998 cover “Turn the Page.”
On Stern’s set, Hetfield introduced the number by musing that he’d once wanted 72 Seasons itself to bear the song’s Latin title—“eternal light.” That sentiment framed the live rendition: Kirk Hammett unleashed a squealing, melodic solo that echoed his classic “Master of Puppets” phrasing, while Robert Trujillo locked into a galloping root-note bass line recalling Cliff Burton’s urgent runs on “Whiplash.” The performance felt less like middle-aged nostalgia and more like a bridge across decades of thrash evolution.
Stern didn’t just sit back; he peppered the band with rapid-fire questions between takes. Listeners heard Hetfield demonstrate the birth of the “Enter Sandman” riff, Ulrich recall Ozzy Osbourne plucking them from clubs to arenas in ’86, and Hammett explain paying seven figures for Peter Green’s famed “Greeny” Les Paul—all mini-stories that enriched the new song’s context.
The mini-setlist that day offered more than a single. They opened with Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page,” dusting off an electric version they hadn’t attempted since 2015, and delivered the re-imagined “Blackened 2020” before detonating “Lux Æterna.” That sequencing underscored the band’s knack for reframing their past while charging forward.
Metallica’s relationship with Stern stretches back to the late ’90s, but recent visits have been especially headline-grabbing. In 2021 the band teamed with Miley Cyrus on “Nothing Else Matters,” a stunt that reintroduced their catalog to Gen-Z TikTok scrollers; Ulrich even teased the global tour and new album on a November 2022 call-in, priming the pump for this 2023 studio takeover.
“Lux Æterna” also served a strategic purpose: showing long-time fans that 72 Seasons would chase the speed-metal adrenaline most associated with 1983’s Kill ’Em All. The live mix—raw vocals high, guitars unvarnished—mirrored the no-overdubs ethos of their 2003 St. Anger sessions but executed with the tightness of road-hardened veterans.
Stern’s broadcast doubled as a soft launch for Metallica’s reactivated SiriusXM channel, “Mandatory Metallica,” which went live the same week. Between songs, Ulrich urged listeners to sample rough mixes, demos, and full concerts streaming on Channel 105, effectively turning the performance into a commercial for the band’s ever-expanding digital ecosystem.
Fan reaction was instantaneous. Clips posted on Stern’s social pages racked up hundreds of thousands of views within hours, with comment threads comparing Hetfield’s grin to the one he flashed on MTV’s Headbangers Ball in 1991. Seasoned metalheads praised the “old-school Metal Church-style speed,” while newer listeners fixated on Hammett’s wah-drenched solo tone.
For Metallica, the appearance marked the latest chapter in a career-long pattern of leveraging mass-media moments—whether their 1991 radio dominance, the 2000 Napster controversy, or the 2017 pop-up club shows—to refuel their brand before major releases. By the time “Lux Æterna” rang out in Stern’s studio, presales for 72 Seasons vinyl variants had already spiked on the band’s web store.
Critically, the track’s brevity and upbeat tempo challenged assumptions that Metallica would keep leaning into the progressive, multi-minute epics of Hardwired… to Self-Destruct. Reviewers hailed it as a retrospective victory lap that distilled forty-plus years of riffcraft into three minutes of pure ignition—a fact the Stern performance made impossible to ignore.
Watching Ulrich’s double-kick flurries echo through Stern’s modest studio, many listeners flashed back to the notorious St. Anger plastic-snare-tone debates; yet here, his drums sounded razor-sharp, demonstrating how the band’s sonic decisions continue to evolve without abandoning signature aggression.
Trujillo, the relative “new guy” who’s now been aboard longer than Jason Newsted ever was, anchored the low end with acrobatic fingerstyle riffs—a reminder that his presence since 2003 has stabilized Metallica’s chemistry, letting Hetfield focus on melody and Ulrich on pacing.
Ultimately, this Stern-show blast of “Lux Æterna” crystallized why Metallica still matters in 2025: they can compress decades of lore, technical finesse, and raw enthusiasm into a single broadcast, turning a radio studio into a thrash cathedral. The Latin phrase may mean “eternal light,” but on that April morning it felt more like an eternal lightning bolt—one still striking with undiminished voltage well into the band’s fifth decade.
