Metallica Announce Their Own SiriusXM Channel, Playing Special Club Show to Launch It

Drummer Lars Ulrich confirmed ‘Maximum Metallica’ during an appearance on the Howard Stern Show

Next year, the heavy metal juggernauts are returning to Europe and the UK for another leg of their M72 World Tour. The trek will feature very special guests Gojira, Pantera, Knocked Loose, and Avatar. The trek will be hitting London, Cardiff, Dublin, Berlin, Bucharest, Athens, and more. The trek will see Metallica play 16 shows across 9 countries. They will be hitting London, Cardiff, Dublin, Berlin, Bucharest, Athens, and more. Select cities will feature Metallica’s No Repeat Weekend format across two shows.

But, that’s not all the band has planned.

Metallica are launching their own SiriusXM channel, Maximum Metallica. The new channel goes live on August 29. Drummer Lars Ulrich confirmed the news on The Howard Stern Show. The channel will not only feature non-stop Metallica music, but also live recordings, rare interviews, and tracks from some of the band’s favorite artists and bands that have influenced Metallica.

To celebrate, the band is playing a very intimate club show at Stephen Talkhouse in Amagensett, New York on August 28. Tickets for the show will be available through a lottery system. Metallica’s live set from Stephen Talkhouse will rebroadcast throughout the week on Maximum Metallica (Channel 42), and will be available on the SiriusXM app. Additionally, the full concert will air on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM channel Howard 101 on Friday, September 5 at 7pm ET and PT.

See more information about entering to win tickets below.

In addition to the news of launching their own SiriusXM channel, Lars also confirmed that Metallica are seriously looking into performing at Sphere in Las Vegas. Lars told Howard that he saw U2 perform at Sphere, and was enthralled by the place. Since then, Metallica’s tour production team has gone out to visit the venue, and plans are in motion for a potential 2027 residency after their 2026 stadium tour across Europe and the UK.

So far, the likes of U2, Eagles, Dead & Company, and more have performed at Sphere. The venue is powered by next-generation technologies, including a 160,000 square-foot LED display inside the main venue bowl that wraps up, over, and around the audience, creating a fully immersive visual environment. At 16K x 16K, it is the highest-resolution LED screen on earth. The venue also features Sphere Immersive Sound, powered by HOLOPLOT, the world’s most advanced concert-grade audio system, which delivers audio with unmatched clarity and precision to every guest.

Along with a residency at Sphere, Metallica are also eyeing up another high-profile gig – the 2026 Super Bowl Halftime Show. Super Bowl LX is set to take place on February 8, 2026 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. Metallica recently performed at the San Francisco Bay Area stadium back in June. While the haven’t gotten the call yet, Lars said, “We [Metallica] were looking around [the stadium] and said, ‘You know, it would be nice to come back here in February.'”

Metallica released their eleventh studio album 72 Seasons, which arrived in April of 2023 via the band’s own label, Blackened Recordings. Produced by Greg Fidelman alongside frontman James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, 72 Seasons is Metallica’s first full length collection of new material since 2016’s Hardwired…To Self-Destruct. The 12-track album clocks in at just over 77 minutes. It debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Rock and Top Hard Rock Albums Charts. It also topped the UK Albums and UK Rock & Metal Albums charts, and went No. 1 in several other countries around the world.

The album garnered the band a 2024 GRAMMY® Award nomination for Best Rock Album, while the lead single “Lux Æterna” was nominated for Best Rock Song. The band won the GRAMMY® for Best Metal Performance for the title track, “72 Seasons.” They beat out Disturbed, Ghost, Slipknot and first-time nominees Spiritbox.

In the midst of pushing a current chart-topping record, Metallica just earned new RIAA certifications for two of their biggest albums.

Metallica’s self-titled fifth album – The Black Album – has been certified 20x platinum for sales in excess of 20 million copies, while the band’s third full length, Master of Puppets, has been certified 8x platinum having crossed the eight million mark. The continued dominance of theses two records decades after being released is a testament to Metallica’s legacy, and the staying power of heavy music.

The Black Album‘s 1991 release not only gave Metallica its first No. 1 album in no fewer than 10 countries, including a 4-week run at No. 1 in the U.S., its unrelenting series of singles — “Enter Sandman”, “The Unforgiven”, “Nothing Else Matters”, “Wherever I May Roam,” and “Sad But True” — fueled the band’s rise to stadium headlining, radio and MTV dominating household name status. The album’s reception from the press was similarly charged, building over the years from the Top 10 of the 1991 Village Voice Pazz & Jop national critics poll to becoming a constant presence in the likes of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The Black Album’s impact and relevance continue to grow with successive generations—it remains unchallenged as the best-selling album of the Luminate era, outselling every release in every genre over the past 30-plus years.

Metallica’s Master of Puppets is the heaviest music album ever to be selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” Master of Puppets has long been regarded as a watershed moment in the history of rock music. The album’s peerless balance of sheer power and complex song craft would earn Metallica its first gold record, elevating the band to new heights of critical acclaim on the strength of enduring favorites including “Battery,” “Orion” and of course the title track – which recently followed “Enter Sandman” and “Nothing Else Matters” as the third Metallica song to join the billion streams club, becoming the second longest song to do so. Clocking in at 8:36, “Master of Puppets” now sits between former second longest billion streamer “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin (8:02) and reigning champion Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well (10 Minute Version).”

Fans can enter to win tickets through a lottery system HERE