'...And Justice for All,' Back After Twelve Years: Metallica's New Sphere Footage, and the Residency Resumes Tonight

By The News Desk, Previously

October 17, 2026

Until now, Metallica's Sphere residency has been a thing you had to be in the room — or holding a phone video of the room — to judge. That changed this week. The band released professionally shot footage from the October 1 opening night of Life Burns Faster, its residency at Sphere in Las Vegas: 'The Call of Ktulu,' shared on October 15, and '...And Justice for All,' unveiled the following day, ThePRP reported. The residency itself resumes tonight, October 17 — and the footage is the best evidence yet of what tonight's audience is walking into.

A Song Back After Twelve Years

'...And Justice for All' is the headline of the two releases for a simple reason: the October 1 performance was the first time the song had been in Metallica's set since 2014, ThePRP and Metal Injection reported. The title track of the band's fourth album, it has always been a demanding piece of writing — and, at Sphere, a piece of staging as well. The performance features a mythic-scale reproduction of the band's classic stage dressing from the album's breakout tour: an enormous statue of the bound Lady Justice, known to fans as Doris, projected above the band and torn apart at the climax of the song, Consequence reported.

The rest of the opening-night setlist shows where the song sat in the evening's architecture. Metal Injection published the full night-one set: 'Battery,' 'Creeping Death,' 'Now That We're Dead' — itself back for the first time since 2021 — 'Sad but True,' 'The Shortest Straw,' 'Wherever I May Roam' and 'The Day That Never Comes' before 'Justice'; then a Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo doodle, 'Nothing Else Matters,' 'The Call of Ktulu,' 'Lux Æterna,' 'Ride the Lightning,' 'The Memory Remains,' 'Seek & Destroy' and 'Master of Puppets.' It is a set built like a career argument, with the rarities placed where the room's attention was guaranteed.

Ktulu, Cthulhu and a Dedication to Cliff Burton

If 'Justice' is the release for the setlist watchers, 'The Call of Ktulu' is the one for everyone else. The pro-shot video features a new orchestral introduction to the instrumental, and visuals of an absolutely enormous Cthulhu rising menacingly from the sea, Consequence reported. The performance ended with a dedication to former bassist Cliff Burton, who died forty years ago.

Consequence singled out Robert Trujillo's playing as the performance's center: the bassist now holding the position Burton once held, carrying the piece while Kirk Hammett's guitar runs and Lars Ulrich's drumming held the line underneath the visuals. That layering — a 1984 instrumental, a dedication four decades old, inside the most technologically advanced concert room ever built — is the residency's whole thesis in a single song: the venue does not replace the band's history, it enlarges it, staging the old imagery at a scale the original tours could not have imagined.

Every Show Recorded, Through March 2027

The two videos are also a business announcement. Metallica is professionally recording every concert of the residency for sale through Nugs, according to summaries of the release, turning a 24-show run into a complete live archive as it happens. The residency is structured as twelve paired 'No Repeat Weekend' engagements totaling 24 shows, running through March 13, 2027, with the Sphere's 16K wraparound LED display and immersive sound system as the production's foundation.

The remaining dates, as listed by ThePRP, resume tonight — October 17 — and continue October 22 and 24, October 29 and 31, November 5 and 7, then into 2027: January 28 and 30, February 4 and 6, February 18 and 20, February 25 and 27, and March 4, 6, 11 and 13. NME likewise reported the residency continues tonight, October 17, and runs throughout the rest of the month before the November and 2027 dates. The band has additionally announced a new 2027 leg of its ongoing M72 tour, Consequence reported.

The Residency as a Vegas Fixture

Three weeks in, Life Burns Faster has settled into the city's calendar the way the strongest Vegas residencies do — less as a tour stop than as a standing attraction, with tonight's show part of the same weekend as a full sports slate across town. That was the bet Sphere's concert model makes on legacy acts: that a room this distinctive turns a band's catalog into a destination, and that fans will travel for a version of the show that cannot be staged anywhere else on earth.

The pro-shot releases test the other half of that bet — whether the room translates to a screen. On the evidence of these two songs, the answer the band is selling is that it does, provided the filming is given the same scale as the room: Doris coming apart above the band, Cthulhu filling the sea behind them, and four musicians still audibly at the center of it. Fans who cannot get to Las Vegas get the document; fans who can, get a reason. Our earlier Sphere coverage, including the residency's mid-run story, is in the news section.

Tonight at Sphere

The band has been alternating between two setlist templates through the residency so far, with occasional changes, ThePRP reported — which means tonight's audience may or may not get 'Justice' itself, but will get one of the two architectures the run is built on. Last night's performance brought no new song additions to the residency, ThePRP reported, keeping the pool of performed songs where the opening weeks set it.

What is certain is the room, the recording, and the occasion: every show is being captured, the run now stretches to March, and the two songs Metallica chose to represent it are a twelve-years-absent epic and an instrumental dedicated to the bassist they lost forty years ago. For a residency named Life Burns Faster, it is a fitting pair of calling cards. Doors tonight at Sphere; the footage, for everyone else, is already out.