METALLICA kicked off the North American leg of its 2017 “WorldWired” tour this past Wednesday night (May 10) at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, marking the start of the band’s first full trek here in seven years.

The 18-song setlist included five tracks from METALLICA‘s latest studio effort, “Hardwired… To Self-Destruct”, along with classics from throughout the group’s 35 years and nine previous albums.

Official video footage of METALLICA performing the new song “Atlas, Rise!” in Baltimore can be seen below.

METALLICA was joined in Baltimore, as they will be on most of the rest of the trek, by VOLBEAT and AVENGED SEVENFOLD.

The North American run will hit stadiums in 23 more cities before ending in mid-August. METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich told Rolling Stone that the band was genuinely surprised to learn they could still play stadiums, saying, “It was like, ‘Holy fuck, people really still care about this band in ways that you stopped taking for granted literally decades ago. It was very inspiring and kind of eye-opening.”

He added: “Full stadium runs can sometimes be a little intimidating. There’s all these things to worry about like, ‘You should really try to play maybe only on the weekend,’ and, ‘Where do you play on Tuesday?’ and some of those practicalities can get a little bewildering. We just threw caution to the wind. Doing a stadium run seemed like the perfect thing on the back of how well this record has been received and all the good will that’s out there in METALLICA‘s world right now.”

The next stop on the tour is MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on Sunday (May 14).

Fonte: Blabbermouth.net