Metallica traded stadium pyrotechnics for sweat-soaked intimacy Thursday night, storming a makeshift tent outside the legendary Stephen Talkhouse in the Hamptons for a once-in-a-lifetime show in front of just 500 fans. For a band that’s used to rattling the rafters of football arenas, the rare small-room throwdown felt like time travel.
“This reminds us of the club days,” James Hetfield told the crowd, flashing the grin of a frontman still intoxicated by volume after four decades. “Getting hot and sweaty and up close and personal. We’re gonna get loud tonight. The neighbors are gonna know who’s here.”
The neighbors, as it turned out, included a surreal constellation of celebrities—Paul McCartney rubbing elbows with Michael J. Fox, Sylvester Stallone, Howard Stern, and Chris Jericho among the lucky contest winners who packed in shoulder to shoulder with diehards.
The set leaned heavily into the canon, detonating from the opening notes of Ride the Lightning’s “Creeping Death” and closing with the inevitable juggernaut “Enter Sandman.” But the night’s most surprising moment came midway through, when Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo broke into Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” as their nightly “doodle,” transforming the space into a heavy metal wake-up call for the Prince of Darkness himself.
The club gig doubled as a launchpad for the band’s new SiriusXM channel, Maximum Metallica, which just went live on Channel 42, giving fans a 24/7 dose of Hetfield growls, Hammett solos, and deep cuts alongside classics.
Fan-shot clips already flooding social media capture a Metallica unshackled by spectacle—just four guys playing louder than life, feeding off the condensation dripping from the tent ceiling. For a band that’s been redefining “big” for decades, the Hamptons show was a reminder of what happens when you strip everything away: Metallica still sounds most dangerous when they’re pressed against the walls.