Tickets are priced from $149.50 to $49.50 and go on sale at 10 a.m. March 25 through Ticketmaster. Danish metal band Volbeat and California’s Avenged Sevenfold are also on the bill
The concert will be part of what the Vikings are calling their “grand opening festivities” for the new downtown Minneapolis football stadium. It takes place the day after country star Luke Bryan’s previously announced Aug. 19 concert, seats for which go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday.
Founded in 1981, Metallica pioneered the genre of thrash metal, initially to an underground audience that soon blossomed into a worldwide following. The band’s self-titled 1991 album has topped 16 million in sales and spawned some of Metallica’s best-known songs in “Enter Sandman,” “The Unforgiven,” “Nothing Else Matters” and “Sad but True.”
Metallica last visited the Twin Cities in October 2009, when they headlined the Target Center. They haven’t mounted a proper North American tour since, instead playing overseas dates and festivals. In February, they performed in San Francisco prior to the Super Bowl. Metallica played the old Metrodome three times, on the Monsters of Rock tour in 1988, on a joint bill with Guns N’ Roses in 1992 and once more in 2003 in the last major concert the venue hosted.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, drummer Lars Ulrich said the band was wrapping up work on a new studio album, their first fresh material since 2008’s “Death Magnetic” and 2011’s divisive Lou Reed collaboration “Lulu.”
“I think it will be a pretty in-your-face year, at least the back half of it,” Ulrich said. “Obviously, we’ve gotta finish the new record now. But thankfully we’re quite far along. Hopefully we should be able to knock that on the head this spring, I would guess. So we will be gearing up and playing shows and doing all that fun stuff again soon.”