Where the Bands Are (Metallica 30 May 2026, Berlin)

If you had told me a few weeks ago that I’d be spending a Saturday night in Berlin surrounded by a sea of screaming metalheads, I would have laughed. Oliver and I had originally booked a long weekend in Berlin for one specific reason: to see Zach Bryan at the Waldbühne on Sunday night. Since I hadn’t stepped foot in the city since the mid-90s, we decided to stretch it into a four-day trip and I even took the Monday off.

We arrived on Friday afternoon, checked into our hotel and headed out for a bite to eat and a quick look around. That’s when we noticed the shirts. It felt like every second person was wearing a Metallica tee. A quick Google search revealed that they were playing the Olympiastadion the very next night. Heavy metal is really not our cup of tea but who wants to die curious? When I asked Oliver what songs he knew, we realized our collective knowledge began and ended with Nothing Else Matters (though we’d certainly heard of titles like Master of Puppets and Enter Sandman without actually knowing what they sound like). Oliver casually looked up tickets, found a couple of general admission passes within our budget and just like that, our country-folk weekend took a detour.

We had read that there would be two support acts, Knocked Loose and Gojira, and that they would be on from 5:30 pm so we arrived at the stadium around 5 pm. Approaching the venue gave me a bit of a surreal feeling because of its history. It was originally built for the 1936 Olympics, and while massive renovations have modernized the arena since then, the classic entrance with the Olympic rings is still standing.

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When we got inside and started walking down the steps towards the GA area we had a pretty amazing view of the stadium. The stage was placed in the middle, shaped like a doughnut and the area directly in the center is the “snake pit”. It costs more to stand there. There was also a so-called “golden circle” around the stage, but we had normal GA and took a spot on the long side closer to the back fence.

We bought two beers in custom-made Metallica plastic mugs that mobile sellers walked around selling. They were 33 cl, which was a normal beer size, but the unusual part was the drink stalls. The beers you could buy from the fixed stalls were only sold in 1-liter sizes, which looked more like a container you’d find in a kitchen when you are baking.

It was fun to watch the audience which was quite mixed. We saw many people in our age group (50+), alongside plenty of younger fans. Almost everyone was wearing black, either a Metallica t-shirt or another heavy metal band shirt. Anyone who knows Oliver and me knows that we almost always (Oliver exclusively) wear black clothes anyway so we actually blended right into the crowd.

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We didn’t actively watch Knocked Loose and Gojira, though we definitely heard them as they entered the stage (Knocked Loose at 5:30 pm and Gojira at 6:30 pm) and took some photos of the jumbotrons placed in the “corners” of the round stage. From our spot, the bands were standing too far away to really see with the naked eye. The sound was incredibly palpable, making it impossible to talk to each other while the bass vibrated right in my ribs. I was so happy that I had remembered to bring my earplugs. We finished our beers and headed to the toilets about 20 minutes before the main act started.

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By the time for the main act the stadium was absolutely packed with 94,000 fans, which apparently broke the attendance record for a single concert at the Olympiastadion. The place is so big that most people were standing or sitting really far away. People in the stands basically had to watch the band on the eight huge, circular video screens hanging over the stage rather than looking at the stage itself.

The band left the stage every now and then to rotate their positions and move the drum set around, which really killed the momentum and pace of the show. To me, being quite a bit shorter than Oliver, it was hard to see them at first because they started on the very far end of the ring. As they moved around I could finally spot them, though they just looked like tiny, ten-centimeter puppets. In a way, they almost looked animated because of the way they behaved in that very typical heavy metal fashion. I’ve later heard that some people down in the golden circle were really disappointed. They were standing right at the rails yet couldn’t see anything because the stage was too high and wide, so they ended up watching the monitors anyway. Standing further back like we did was definitely the better choice.

Even though Metallica has been going for so many years and the members are in their sixties, you could tell they still have a lot of fun doing what is clearly demanding work. Lars Ulrich was working his tail off behind the drums, constantly gritting his teeth, forming a silent “Come on” with his lips and springing to his feet at the end of songs. James Hetfield had a great presence on stage with his grey beard, tree-trunk arms and a huge stance at the microphone. His guitar looked like a tiny toy in his hands.

One of the highlights was “Rob and Kirk’s Doodle”, a fun little tradition where the bassist and guitarist take over the stage for a few minutes to play a quick, “spontaneous” cover of a song associated with the city they are visiting. It’s meant to be a a fun local tribute and a crowd sing-along (and a chance for the lead singer to rest?). For Berlin, they played Rammstein’s Sonne. It was a very nice sequence and the audience responded well.

The atmosphere was really good from start to finish. Everyone in the stands stood up from the very beginning to the end, singing along and headbanging. The crowd was astonishingly engaged and even though some of them were as old as the band (or even older), they kept the steam up the entire time. They finally played Nothing Else Matters, which was the only song we actually knew. It was a cool moment hearing 94,000 people singing along in the night air. We had decided beforehand to leave with about two or three songs left to beat the rest of the crowd to the trains back to the city. Right after the song finished, we slowly exited the arena.

We could still hear everything perfectly clear on our way out. There were a lot of people just sitting around outside the stadium listening to the show. They had made the budget choice, and you could actually hear the music incredibly well from out there.

We were very happy with our choice to leave early. We got back to our hotel without any fuss at all. We were already sitting in the hotel bar almost finished with our beers by the time the other concert-goers staying at the hotel started arriving.

All in all, it was a fun night and a good experience. Heavy metal might not be our typical choice of music, but it felt great to finally check Metallica off my list of iconic bands to see live.

The next day was going to bring a completely different vibe, as we traded the roaring 94,000-strong stadium rock crowd for a much more intimate evening with Zach Bryan at the beautiful Waldbühne. See next blogpost!

Setlist

• Creeping Death
• For Whom the Bell Tolls
• Of Wolf and Man
• The Memory Remains
• 72 Seasons
• The Unforgiven
• Fuel
• Sonne (Rammstein cover by Kirk and Rob)
• The Day That Never Comes
• Wherever I May Roam
• Nothing Else Matters
• Sad but True
• One
• Seek & Destroy
• Master of Puppets
• Enter Sandman