LAS VEGAS — James Hetfield had one question for fans:

“Do you want heavy, Vegas?” the Metallica frontman asked the capacity crowd assembled before him and his fellow bandmates — drummer Lars Ulrich, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo. “Metallica gives you heavy.”

Yet, it was different kind of “heavy” than ever before as the bestselling Bay Area band of all time kicked off its multi-month Life Burns Faster concert residency in the Sphere in Las Vegas in spectacular fashion on Thursday, Oct. 1.

Of course, there was once a day that it would have seemed inconceivable that the world’s greatest metal band would be playing a residency in the city of Donny Osmond and Wayne Newton. But times have changed, in a big way, and residencies at the Sphere, in particular, are some of the hottest tickets on the market. That’s certainly true in the case of Metallica, which has posted sell-outs for each and every one of its many Sphere shows on a run that currently stretches into March.

The show lived up to the advance hype as Metallica kicked off the two-hour-plus performance with “Battery,” a “Master of Puppets” classic that reportedly hadn’t been used for an opener in over a dozen years, and then moved back one album to “Ride the Lightning” for a thundering “Creeping Death.”

The band’s metal mastery was met head on by the Sphere’s increasingly fabled and definitely incomparable video graphic displays, which are shown on the incredibly vivid and clear 16K resolution wraparound LED screen that dominates the interior of this 366-foot-tall building.

Metallica worked on an arrow-shaped stage, hollow in the center so that fans with those treasured “Snake Pit” ducats could step inside for incredibly close-up views of the four musicians, while the multi-story video images towered over the proceedings.

The Sphere set up is a traditional amphitheater-style configuration, where the seats span roughly 180-degrees in front of the band. But, in the first of many fantastic tricks, a video of the crowd was mirrored on the screen during “Battery,” making the Sphere look like the kind of 360-degree football stadiums that Metallica has been playing on its ongoing M72 Tour.

From there, the graphics changed with every single song — a rainy wasteland for “Creeping Death”; the dramatic interior of an old church with each of the players featured in stained glass windows for the seldom-played “Now That We’re Dead”; giant hammers pummeling back and forth on “Sad but True”; a very Vegas appropriate Metallica slot machine that eventually spit out guitar picks on “The Shortest Straw”; a winged sea beast stalking the Las Vegas Strip to “The Call of Ktulu” (dedicated, as per usual, to late, great bassist Cliff Burton); etc.

They brought the concert to a close with the powerful pairing of “Seek & Destroy” and “Master of Puppets,” before departing the stage to get ready for Night 2 on Saturday — when fans will hear an all-different set of tunes as part of the “No Repeat Weekend” format.

Metallica envisions these concerts as two parts of the same concert experience, as opposed to two distinct and unrelated concerts. In the same spirit, tune back in on Sunday to read our review of the entire opening weekend of Metallica’s Life Burns Faster residency at the Sphere.

Metallica Oct. 1, 2027, setlist:

1. “Battery”

2. “Creeping Death”

3. “Now That We’re Dead”

4. “Sad but True”

5. “The Shortest Straw”

6. “Wherever I May Roam”

7. “The Day That Never Comes”

8. “…And Justice for All”

9. Kirk and Rob Doodle

10. :Nothing Else Matters”

11. “The Call of Ktulu”

12. “Lux Æterna”

13. “Ride the Lightning”

14. “The Memory Remains”

15. “Seek & Destroy”

16. “Master of Puppets”

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