During the weekend of June 23rd/24th 2012, Metallica headlined their own festival, ‘Orion: Music + More’. In keeping with all of their other festival appearances throughout the year, the second night of the festival featured the metal titans performing the whole of their 1991 self-titled release.
The first night, however, featured something rather more special. On June 23rd 2012, Metallica performed the whole of their 1984 release ‘Ride The Lightning’ as the centrepiece for their two hour set. Some of the ‘Ride’ songs had not had a regular slot in the band’s set list for some time, while ‘Escape’ had never been performed live previous to this occasion.
The rest of the set appeared as strong, and equally steeped in nostalgia. Being almost entirely constructed of tunes from between 1983-1991, it was left to ‘Hell and Back’ (from 2012’s ‘Beyond Magnetic’ EP) to solely fly the flag for Metallica’s more recent output.
[You can also watch another complete Metallica show from 2012 by clicking here]