Metallica is celebrating the tenth anniversary of Live Metallica, a site the heavy metal band created to provide fans with high quality soundboard recordings of just about every concert they’ve played over the last decade as digital downloads (preventing low grade, bootlegged versions of their live performances from leaking). To commemorate the occasion, the band is going “old school” as their website puts it, and plan to release a total of twenty-seven albums on CD, three every Monday, till the end of the year. The albums are live recordings from their 2014 Metallica By Request tour shows, starting with Bogota, Colombia, Quito, Ecuador, and Lima, all of which are already available. Next Monday, September 22nd, the next three shows from Metallica’s South American run will be available.
But wait – that’s not all! “For you vinyl junkies, we will be releasing select shows on limited edition 180 gram vinyl. Head over here to vote for your favs and the top four shows that receive the most votes will be pressed up for you to order in early 2015,” reads the announcement on LiveMetallica.com. The voting for which concerts will be pressed continues through to September 28th. If you want it all and you just can’t wait, Metallica is also providing the opportunity to pre-order the entire 2014 tour in a box set, including all twenty-seven of the shows, that will be made available in December. The most popular records will be made available on vinyl in early 2015. The band is also promising more box sets and released for next year already.
The Metallica By Request tour was unique in that it let fans write the setlist for the band but also enabled the band to premiere a new song at the shows. In more recent news, the band was awarded a place in the 2015 edition of the Guinness World Records for touring all seven continents all within one year, with Antarctica being “the gig of a lifetime,” according to frontman James Hetfield. Currently, the band is working on their first album since Death Magnetic was released in 2008. They debuted one single off the album, “Lords of Summer” this past year in Bogota. Fans can keep up with Metallica’s activities on the band’s website as well as their Facebook, which is where the limited edition vinyl vote is taking place.