The Principality Stadium in Cardiff is only hosting two bands in 2026: how fitting that one of them is the biggest metal band the world has ever known. A Metallica show is an event like no other— the entire city was infested with battle jackets and band tees, bringing local public transport to its knees— and on Sunday night, it was no surprise to see the gigantic arena packed to the brim with adoring fans, all eager to celebrate heavy music. Honestly, it’s difficult to describe the excitement that Metallica (and support act Gojira) brought to the place.

The other band playing in the stadium this year, if you were curious, is Take That.

Gojira

Having missed Knocked Loose’s set a little earlier in the day— it’s no exaggeration to say that the city of Cardiff was at a standstill— it was the overwhelming sound of Gojira that greeted us at the Principality: as warm welcomes go, this was blazing hot! The French band are no strangers to large crowds, especially after their instantly-iconic performance at the Paris Olympics, but even they seemed small on Metallica’s enormous stage, which came in the form of a ring in the heart of the stadium. Realistically, no four-piece could hope to properly fill such a gargantuan space, especially when working with the constrained lighting and special effects of a support act: no, if Gojira made an impression on you in Cardiff, it was for their towering sound. The screeching breakdown that caps off ‘Flying Whales’ and the bombastic climax of ‘Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça Ira!)’ were nothing short of deafening, as you would expect from one of the most legendary metal bands around— Mario Duplantier’s drums sounds bigger, thicker, heavier than ever, and the rest of group weren't far behind.

As setlists go, Gojira are hardly pulling out the deep cuts for this tour: they’re largely playing to a Metallica-centric audience, after all, so it only makes sense that they would highlight their most popular material. If you’ve seen the band perform in the UK in recent years, there was little here to surprise you, save arguably for the vicious technical precision of ‘Love’ and the explosive riffs of Fortitude deep-cut ‘Grind’— that is not, crucially, a criticism of the show. There’s something about seeing bassist Jean-Michel Labadie jumping excitedly around the stage that never gets old, and something in Joe Duplantier’s harrowing bellows that puts a chill down your spine every time. Here, playing one of the biggest shows of their lives, the group plowed through the racing blasts of ‘Silvera’ and the undeniable grooves of ‘Amazonia’ with presence and consistency. Gojira may not have whipped the Cardiff crowd into a frenzy— Metallica’s audience is notoriously difficult to please— but that’s no knock against them. The French four-piece continue to earn their place in the Mount Rushmore of modern metal.

Metallica

It’s hard to overstate the amount of anticipation and suspense in the stadium on Sunday night, save to say that even the dragon-adorned poster for the show was receiving cheers from this 70,000 strong mass of fans. 35 years after their commercial prime, Metallica are still one of the biggest touring acts in the world: how fitting then, that they’d take to the stage not just to ACDC’s ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock’n’Roll),’ but to Ennio Morricone’s ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’ as well. Then the band launched into ‘Creeping Death,’ and we were off. Right from that opening barrage of power chords and snare hits, it was clear that Metallica were content to play the hits, here at their first Welsh show in almost 30 years. As far as deep cuts are concerned, it was really only 2008’s ‘Cyanide’ that came as a genuine surprise: of the sixteen tracks that rang out across the Principality, only three of them came from the 21st century! Hetfield and company know what their fans want to hear— in Cardiff, they delivered exactly that.

Metallica carried with them an unmistakable confidence, and an understandable one at that: they’ve been doing this for more than forty years at this point, and it’s clear that in the eyes of their fans, they can do no wrong. In Cardiff, their show was massive, and theatrical at every turn, yet was peppered with just enough heart and intimacy to sell every joke and every ballad. Oftentimes, it really felt like the four-piece were letting you peek at one of their jam sessions, right down to some jarringly sloppy lead playing from Kirk Hammett. That happy-go-lucky cover of Tom Jones’ ‘Delilah’ was positively deafening, with the entire crowd screaming along to its winning chorus: it’s an ironic twist that this song, which is infamously banned at the Principality, went down so well. It was simply heartwarming to see that, even after playing so many shows in the past few years alone, Metallica were still having fun up on that stage. Hetfield’s admittance that “I like that one” after ‘Fuel’ was just one of the many endearing touches that made this set of epic proportions hit so close to home.

And yet, at the same time, it was impossible to forget that these guys are celebrities of the highest order, and one of the biggest bands in the world. As we wheeled into the second half of the show (characterised by, admittedly, one-too-many transitional cinematics), Metallica threw out any mention of ’72 Seasons’ and simply began to beat you over the head with mega-hit after mega-hit, cementing their status and importance in the minds of 70,000 people. There’s nothing quite like the unbridled thrill of singing ‘The Memory Remains’ and ‘Master Of Puppets’ with so many other fans all around you, and that’s not even mentioning the absolute reverence afforded to ‘Nothing Else Matters.’ Here, in the second half of the set, was when Metallica really came into their own, “giving you heavy” on the part of the crushing ‘Sad But True’ and the indomitable ‘Wherever I May Roam’— they were releasing inflatables during ‘Seek And Destroy,’ hitting you with blinding strobes to complement ‘One,’ and in the end, ‘Enter Sandman’ brought the house down. The four-piece are quite simply legendary: this 2.5 hour set made that very clear.