From a spaghetti Western entrance to towering hammers, the Las Vegas spectacle left Skratch N Sniff host Malcolm Ryker calling it the concert experience of his life.
Before Metallica even hit the stage, the ceiling had something to say.
Overhead, a sprawling collection of Metallica notes, flags and graffiti from around the world greeted fans entering the Sphere in Las Vegas. For Skratch N Sniff host Malcolm Ryker, it recalled a European pub: a place where generations of visitors leave something behind, turning the room into a record of everyone who passed through. Inside a venue built to overwhelm, that first impression was surprisingly personal. Metallica’s fans were part of the scenery.
Then came the Western.
As the familiar sounds of Ennio Morricone’s “Ecstasy of Gold” filled the room, it took on an enormous new dimension, with spaghetti Western imagery that, to Ryker, looked straight out of a vintage Clint Eastwood movie. Metallica have long understood the anticipation their entrance creates. Here, the visual treatment gave that ritual an appropriately cinematic setting, stretching the moment before the music into a spectacle of its own.
Ryker watched from the second level, a vantage point that let him take in the dome’s full visual sweep. He had heard it was the ideal place to experience the production. His verdict afterward was considerably less qualified: “The most incredible visual and concert experience of my life.”
The songs he singled out explain some of that enthusiasm. “Battery,” “Master of Puppets,” “Nothing Else Matters” and “Sad But True” supplied a formidable range of Metallica’s strengths: velocity, intricate menace, vulnerability and sheer weight. They also offered very different moods for a production operating on this scale. The appeal was in seeing familiar songs occupy an unfamiliar amount of space.
“Sad But True” delivered one of the evening’s most striking images: giant hammers looming across the dome. Ryker described the aesthetic as almost post-communist, an impression of industrial power and monumental severity. It was a fitting visual companion to a song whose heaviness feels less like a sprint than machinery bearing down on you. At the Sphere, that weight acquired a visible shape.
For Ryker, the lasting images were enormous: the spaghetti Western introduction, the towering hammers during “Sad But True,” and the sweep of the dome from his second-level seat. Together with the songs he came to hear, they made for an evening that exceeded even his expectations. His verdict says it best: “The most incredible visual and concert experience of my life.” A once-in-a-lifetime night, with Metallica at the centre of it all.
