Metallica Unearths "Devil's Dance" at Sphere Night 2 — First Live Performance in 18 Years

LAS VEGAS — Some songs a band just stops playing, and you accept that you'll never hear them live again. Then Metallica opened up its Sphere residency's second night and brought "Devil's Dance" back from an 18-year absence — the loudest proof yet that this Las Vegas engagement is built for the deep-cut faithful.

01The Second Night, Start to Finish

LAS VEGAS — On Saturday night, Oct. 3, 2026, Metallica walked onto the stage at Sphere in Las Vegas for the second show of its "Life Burns Faster" residency and did something the band has made a career of doing: it refused to repeat itself. Night 2 featured a completely different setlist from the Oct. 1 opener, honoring the "No Repeat Weekend" format the band built during its ongoing M72 world tour. Not a single song was played twice across the two nights, according to Blabbermouth.

The night opened with "Blackened," the stormy Thrash-Metal statement from 1988's ...And Justice for All, and from there the set rolled through deep-cut territory and catalog pillars alike. The set included "Fuel," "Leper Messiah," "72 Seasons," "King Nothing," "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)," "The Unforgiven," "Orion," "Hardwired" and the band's traditional folk-steel romp "Whiskey in the Jar," before a closing run of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" into "One" into the inevitable "Enter Sandman."

For a band with more than 40 years of catalog behind it, a no-repeat second night is a real test — and the band passed it without reaching for the obvious, proving once again that the M72 format is less a gimmick than a discipline.

02The Shock of the Night: "Devil's Dance"

The moment nobody in the room saw coming arrived midway through the night: "Devil's Dance," the grinding, groove-heavy track from 1997's ReLoad, got its first live performance since June 7, 2008 — a gap of roughly 18 years. Blabbermouth, which covered the show, called it the standout surprise of the residency's second night, and the footage from inside the venue tells the story: a packed, sold-out house reacting like it had just been let in on a secret.

"Devil's Dance" was never one of the band's biggest singles, but that is precisely what made the moment land. ReLoad-era deep cuts rarely surface in a setlist that has to satisfy four decades of fans, and the song's absence from the stage since the summer of 2008 made it a genuine excavation — a song most of the crowd had only ever heard on record suddenly living again in front of a 160,000-square-foot screen.

It was not the only resurrection. The band also dusted off "The Outlaw Torn," the 18-minute-closer ballad from 1996's Load, for the first time in seven years — it was last played live on Sept. 8, 2019. Two such rarities in a single night is the kind of thing that defines a residency: these are performances built for the faithful who will fly to Las Vegas specifically to see the songs no tour setlist ever makes room for.

03No Repeat Weekend, Sphere Edition

The two-night no-repeat structure is a signature of the M72 world tour, which began in March 2023, and it has been scaled up for the residency. The "Life Burns Faster" engagement consists of 24 performances staged as 12 "No Repeat Weekend" engagements, running across October, November, January, February and March, according to Far Out Magazine.

That means every weekend is its own pair: two shows, two completely different setlists, and a format that rewards the fans who commit to both nights. For a band with a catalog as deep as Metallica's, the structure is a natural fit — but executing it at Sphere scale, with the venue's custom production, doubles the workload. The visuals, staging and cues have to be built twice, for two entirely different shows.

Far Out Magazine also reported last month that Metallica announced 12 new North American dates on the ongoing M72 world tour — a reminder that the Sphere residency is running in parallel with, not replacing, the band's touring machine. The residency is the centerpiece of a schedule that already had the band committed through the world tour's third year.

04A Production Built for the Sphere

Metallica is the first metal act to ever headline the Sphere, and the residency is built around everything the venue can do. The production runs across the building's 160,000-square-foot interior LED screen, paired with high-definition audio and 4D effects — including wind and in-seat haptics — that turn a metal show into something closer to a cinematic experience.

The Gallery's review of Night 2 described visuals that ranged from a speeding railway tunnel to sweeping cinematic landscapes, wrapping the entire audience in the band's imagery rather than presenting it as a stage behind them. In a venue designed to put every seat inside the screen, that means the deep cuts didn't just get played — they got staged like events.

Readers looking for more on the residency and the broader Las Vegas entertainment scene can find our continuing coverage in the Culture and Music sections, with the latest headlines always on News.

05What Comes Next

The residency continues this month with shows on Oct. 15 and 17, Oct. 22 and 24, and Oct. 29 and 31 — each weekend a new pair of no-repeat nights. If Night 2 is any indication, the remaining weekends will keep reaching further back into the catalog, and fans on the fence about a second night now have a very clear answer about what they'd be missing.

An 18-year gap closing on a Saturday night in Las Vegas, in a venue built to make every moment feel monumental — "Devil's Dance" finally back in the setlist is the kind of thing this residency exists for. Twenty-four shows, twelve weekends, and no repeats: the "Life Burns Faster" engagement is still just getting started.