Metallica Ignited Melbourne with a Spine-Chilling Rendition of “The Memory Remains” at Marvel Stadium 2025
By the time Metallica walked out at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne on November 8, 2025, the city already felt like it was vibrating on a different frequency. The build-up had been huge: their long-awaited return to Australia on the M72 World Tour, a one-night-only stop with tickets and enhanced experiences sold out months in advance. Outside Docklands, black T-shirts, tour hoodies, and homemade banners turned the precinct into a river of metal pilgrims, all converging on the arena that would host one of the loudest Saturdays Melbourne has heard in years.
The first rumble of the night didn’t even come from Metallica themselves. As fans poured into the bowl of Marvel Stadium, Suicidal Tendencies tore into their set with their trademark skate-punk ferocity, warming up the pit with circle-mosh energy that felt like 1980s Venice Beach dropped into Victoria. Then Evanescence followed, Amy Lee’s voice soaring through the stadium roof, casting a gothic glow over the evening and bridging generations of rock fans. The bill felt like its own mini-festival: three distinct eras and flavors of heavy music, gradually turning up the emotional temperature before the headliners ever touched a string.
As the house lights dimmed for the main event, AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll)” blasted over the PA, an especially cheeky local nod given that somewhere in this city those bagpipes were practically part of the national DNA. Then came the scar-on-every-Metallica-fan’s-heart moment: Ennio Morricone’s “The Ecstasy of Gold” rolled across the screens, just like it has for decades, now rendered in towering video and surround sound. In that instant, 40-plus years of history telescoped into a single shared breath. Every arm went up, every phone went out, and thousands of people remembered exactly why they fell in love with this band.
The opening blast of Creeping Death hit like a freight train. One second the crowd was roaring at a backing track; the next, Lars Ulrich’s drums were ricocheting off the stadium’s roof, Rob Trujillo’s bass rumbled underfoot, and James Hetfield was barking “Slaves! Hebrews born to serve!” with that sandpaper roar. From there, For Whom the Bell Tolls rolled in like a tank, its iconic bass intro sending another wave of adrenaline through the floor. Any rust from twelve years away from Australian stages was obliterated within minutes; this was a band still treating arena thrash like a full-contact sport.
Ride the Lightning, one of the night’s early highlights, brought the first true “deep cut” thrill for old-school fans hugging the rail. The stadium lights strobed electric-blue as Kirk Hammett’s solos carved their way across the PA, and you could see clusters of fans in vintage 80s tour shirts losing their minds, shouting every lyric. This wasn’t a greatest-hits jukebox show; it was Metallica deliberately mixing eras, reminding everyone that the songs which built their legend are still as volatile live as they were in the tape-trading days. The energy in the bowl felt less like nostalgia and more like a time bomb resetting.
Then came the night’s title-track moment: The Memory Remains. As soon as the first slashing chords hit, you could feel a different kind of electricity take over the stadium. This wasn’t just another Reload-era single; it was a communal ritual in the making. The big screens flashed grainy, sepia-tinted visuals, and James leaned into the mic with that familiar smirk, knowing exactly what was about to happen. By the time the verse rolled into the chorus, he barely needed to sing—tens of thousands of fans were already out-shouting the PA.
The song’s legendary “na-na-na” coda turned Marvel Stadium into a single, roaring choir. Metallica stretched the outro into an extended jam, letting the band drop out at points so the crowd could sing unaccompanied, just a massive human echo swirling up into the night. Hetfield grinned and paced the stage like a conductor, Lars punctuating the chant with snare cracks, Kirk adding little bluesy tails between phrases, and Rob head-banging at the edge of the Snake Pit. For a few minutes, the song stopped being a track from 1997 and became a living, breathing stadium anthem that belonged just as much to Melbourne as it did to the band.
If The Memory Remains was the sing-along peak, Lux Æterna was the nitro shot. The new-era blitz from 72 Seasons felt like a postcard from Metallica’s future: short, fast, and unapologetically old-school. Live, it came across like Motörhead crashing into Kill ’Em All, with Hetfield spitting rapid-fire lines and the whole band playing with the kind of youthful spite that made younger fans in the stands realize this wasn’t just a legacy act coasting on history. When they followed it with the ominous stomp of If Darkness Had a Son, the setlist’s through-line became clear—this was a band eager to prove that their recent material can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the classics.
Mid-show, the spotlight turned to the Kirk & Rob doodle segment, which has become a cult favorite on the M72 tour. In Melbourne, they winked at the band’s own origin story, weaving in bits of Hit the Lights before slipping into a swaggering tease of ZZ Top’s La Grange. Fans in the lower tiers danced as if they’d stumbled into a Texas roadhouse, while the die-hards near the stage laughed and pointed every time the duo flirted with a familiar riff. It was loose, goofy, and deliberately imperfect—proof that beneath all the pyro and production, Metallica still thrives on spontaneous, musician-to-musician joy.
From there, the emotional temperature climbed again. The Day That Never Comes brought lighters, phone flashlights, and a stadium-wide sway that felt more like a shared confession than a ballad break. Then Fuel detonated with all the borrowed NASCAR fury it’s famous for, flames licking skyward from the stage every time the chorus slammed in. Even fans who’d joked online about “Load/Reload songs” beforehand were visibly converted, jumping and shouting along as Marvel Stadium briefly turned into a fire-breathing machine. One Facebook fan who’d just seen their first Metallica show summed it up after the gig: they “absolutely KILLED it tonight” and did not disappoint.
Some of the night’s purest magic came when Metallica leaned into their more contemplative side. Orion, the instrumental masterpiece, gave each member space to breathe; Rob’s bass tone rolled like thunder across the stadium, and Kirk’s melodic leads drew a hush from sections that had been screaming moments before. Nothing Else Matters, meanwhile, delivered exactly what thousands of couples in the stands had hoped for—arms around shoulders, heads on shoulders, and a sense that time had briefly slowed down inside the concrete bowl. It was the kind of big-venue intimacy only a handful of bands can truly pull off.
Of course, the serenity couldn’t last. Sad but True landed with the weight of a wrecking ball, that monstrous riff stomping across the lower levels, and One unleashed its familiar war-zone theatrics—strobing “machine-gun” lights, artillery visuals, and James prowling the catwalk with the grim focus of a man who’s played this song thousands of times but still finds something new in it every night. In the stands, you could pick out fans who’d first heard One on MTV decades ago standing right next to teens experiencing it live for the very first time, both equally stunned.
Seek & Destroy turned the final stretch into a punk-party throwback, with the band working every corner of the stage as if they were still in club mode. Then, almost inevitably, those ominous clean notes signaled Enter Sandman. By this point, the M72 production had gone full spectacle: smoke bursts, spotlights scanning the tiers, and what felt like the entire stadium yelling “WE’RE OFF TO NEVER-NEVER LAND!” in full-throated unison. Melbourne’s pre-tour guides had promised a finale packed with pyrotechnics and communal catharsis; what the crowd got was all that plus the feeling of being inside the world’s largest hard-rock choir.
What made this Melbourne stop feel extra charged was the context surrounding it. The Australian leg was the long-deferred payoff after the scrapped 2019 dates, a kind of makeup promise finally honored. In Perth a week earlier, Metallica’s return had been so intense that a couple of fans infamously scaled a stadium tower and wound up arrested, a chaotic footnote that only added to the lore of this run. By the time the caravan rolled into Victoria, you could sense the band playing with the swagger of a group that knew they were making good on a decade-long IOU to an entire continent.
Even beyond the music, the show was a reminder of just how massive the M72 era has become. From Snake Pit experiences and early entry packages to fans traveling across borders to catch multiple dates, this tour has been less like a standard rock run and more like a roving heavy-metal convention. Reports of the band giving Wolfgang Van Halen a tongue-in-cheek “Perfect Attendance Award” for his earlier legs on the tour underlined how interconnected the whole M72 family has become—a rolling community of musicians, crew, and hardcore followers converging city after city. Melbourne felt like the southern hemisphere’s turn to host that traveling circus at maximum volume.
As the final bows were taken and the house lights crept back up, people were slow to leave. Fans lingered in the aisles taking photos with the still-glowing stage behind them, comparing favorite moments—some swore The Memory Remains sing-along was the night’s true high, others argued for the pulverizing power of One or the surprise emotional punch of Orion. What everyone seemed to agree on, though, was that Metallica had delivered a show that justified every year of waiting. For a few hours, Marvel Stadium wasn’t just a sports arena; it was a time machine, a cathedral, and a gathering place for generations of metalheads who now shared one more memory that definitely will remain.
