Metallica announce global listening party for new album ’72 Seasons’

Metallica have announced a global listening party to preview their latest record, 72 Seasons.

The 11th studio album by the metal titans will be premiered simultaneously at cinemas around the world on April 13, as part of a presentation that will feature an individual video for each track, as well as commentary from the band.

72 Seasons is due to be released the following day, April 14. It was prefaced last November by lead single ‘Lux Æterna’, which has now been followed by another new track in the form of ‘Screaming Suicide’. You can see the band announcing the global premiere in a video below.

The new record is the group’s first since 2016’s Hardwired…to Self-Destruct. It was co-produced by frontman James Hetfield, drummer Lars Ulrich and Greg Fidelman, and like their last album, clocks in at 77 minutes. No cities have been confirmed for the 72 Seasons premiere as yet, but you can sign up to be notified in due course here. Tickets go on sale at the same link on March 2.

According to the band, 72 Seasons takes its name from the number of seasons we’ve lived thorough by the time we become adults, with Hetfield suggesting that the album will be a rumination of sorts on the relationship between childhood and adulthood. “72 seasons — the first 18 years of our lives that form our true or false selves,” he said in a statement. “The concept that we were told ‘who we are’ by our parents. A possible pigeonholing around what kind of personality we are. I think the most interesting part of this is the continued study of those core beliefs and how it affects our perception of the world today. Much of our adult experience is a reenactment or reaction to these childhood experiences. Prisoners of childhood or breaking free of those bondages we carry.”

To mark the release, Metallica will launch a new world tour. Titled ‘M72’, it will see them play two nights in each city, with two unique, career-spanning setlists that see no tracks from night one repeated on night two. That will include two nights at a special, expanded four-day edition of Download Festival, where they play on June 8 and 10, along with fellow headliners Slipknot and Bring Me the Horizon.