Metallica Shows Shatter Empower Field Attendance Records

Sorry, Taylor Swift — you've been surpassed by the overlords of metal.

While the mega pop star held the record for attendance over two concerts at Empower Field after her Eras Tour in 2023, at the time beating out Ed Sheeran's record, that all changed when Metallica brought its M72 World Tour to the venue for two epic shows on Friday, June 27, and Sunday, June 29. In total, the shows brought 152,000 fans to the stadium, where the metal band performed with Limp Bizkit and Ice Nine Kills on Friday and openers Pantera and Suicidal Tendencies on Sunday.

You could spot metalheads in town all week leading up to the concerts, and they broke a record, as well: Metallica fans set a new donation record for the Denver Red Cross, which collected 240 units of blood. Saving lives and two Metallica shows? Now that's metal.

As we noted after Friday's show, it's rare for a metal band to play, let alone sell out, a stadium show. But Metallica is another type of beast. The band, which formed in Los Angeles in 1981, is known for innovating thrash metal and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009. It's been nominated for 26 Grammy awards, winning ten, and is one of the most commercially successful bands from the U.S. ever, with more than 120 million albums sold worldwide.

Metallica shared tunes from across its discography over its two shows in Denver. On Friday, the band opened with "Creeping Death" into "Harvester of Sorrow," kicking off a sixteen-song setlist that also included “King Nothing” and “Fuel” from Load and Reload, “Cyanide” and “The Day That Never Comes” from Death Magnetic, and Black Album bangers “Nothing Else Matters,” “Holier Than Thou” and “Sad but True." The show ended with the encore "Master of Puppets." Sunday's show opened with "Whiplash" and "For Whom the Bell Tolls," and the set included "Lux Æterna," from 2023's 72 Seasons, the band's eleventh studio album. The set finished off with an epic encore of "Enter Sandman."

If you're still buzzing from the weekend of revelry, be sure to check out the other metal concerts coming to Denver this year.