Troy Rawhiti-Connell reports from the scene of his heavy metal dream come true.
Happy Metallica Boxing Day to those who celebrated! I hope jolly Saint Anger brought you ringing ears, a pounding headache, a sore neck, and a raspy voice to take back to your families and colleagues.
If you’re a regular reader of The Spinoff, you may have read the magic numbers 16, 22, 29, and 44, sequenced in this lovely piece on my metal fandom by the only other Rawhiti-Connell in the world. It means I don’t have to spend much time explaining the lengths I and a few others would go to, to be able to stand on a specific patch of plastic-sheeted turf and yell “DIE! DIE! DIE!” at men old enough to be my parents.
It’s normal to me, and to the 40,000-odd others who turned up to see the return of the mighty Metallica at Eden Park for the final stop in this leg of their wallet-threateningly expensive global roadshow, the M72 World Tour.
And nothing matters more on M72 than getting a pass to the Snake Pit.
An innovation of live concert staging that’s been a feature of many Metallica shows since 1991, you can imagine the Snake Pit as a chunk of floor removed from the massive stadium stage. In that remaining space? The luckiest fans in town.
At age 16, I was already a dedicated rail rider, first to the barrier and last to leave, usually with less elbow skin than I went in with. The Snake Pit, with its insanely close proximity to the band, who ran around the outer ring of the pit in a full 360-degree performance, looked like the right kind of murder on the dance floor for me.
Three times, Metallica came to New Zealand after I started going to concerts, but minus the Snake Pit. I felt like Neil Armstrong in his moon suit as I took my long-awaited walk into the Snake Pit on November 19, 2025. My one great leap for metalkind into the most eclectic gated community I’ve seen in three decades of live metal.
Nearby stood Jay Weinberg, drummer of opening band Suicidal Tendencies and former skinbasher for Slipknot. At another point, Danny Carey, drummer of prog-metal legends Tool. Also in the mix were Simon Bridges, former lead drummer of the National Party, and Taika Waititi, whose musical provenance is unknown to me.
Counted in by Lars Ulrich, the drummer everyone had come to see, New Zealand’s national stadium became hell itself. Metallica’s mammoth big screens and lighting array bathed 40,000 people in a wash of blood-red ambience as the first notes of 1984’s ‘Creeping Death’ split the night asunder, strangled from the neck of James Hetfield’s mighty rhythm guitar.
As time marched on, Metallica chugged out a menu of crowd-pleasing delights, featuring no deep cuts and only one fresh song – ‘Lux Æterna’ from 2023’s 72 Seasons.
The pyro and power propelling mid-set monsters like ‘Fuel’ and ‘Moth Into Flame’ took Eden Park fully supernova, before the black-shirted masses swayed with lovers and strangers for ‘Nothing Else Matters’, and karaoke’d their way through ‘Enter Sandman’.
Band members running around the Snake Pit created a noisy game of hide-and-seek. Where’s James? He’s behind you! Where did Kirk Hammett go? Over there! At the tail end of the show, the band left the main stage entirely to a new setup at the front of the enclosure, playing to the wider crowd while the Snake Pit fans cheered and whooped at Metallica’s backs. Absurd and fun.
In each city, bassist Robert Trujillo and lead guitarist Hammett jam on local tunes – in Australia covers included INXS, AC/DC and ‘Smoko’ by The Chats. Here, anything by Shihad and a louder-than-Ruby-Tui belting of ‘Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi’ would have been great. Instead, we heard ‘I Got You’ by Split Enz, and Eden Park heroes Six60’s ‘Don’t Forget Your Roots’, which maybe should have been retitled ‘Don’t Forget The Words’.
Nevertheless, Metallica left Eden Park in absolute triumph and I left with aching feet and stiffening legs.
So why did I, at 44, want to fulfil my boyhood dream and enter the Snake Pit? I think I met the answer last night.
12-year-old Californian Russell Watson is already Instagram-famous as a budding metal guitarist and, with his kickass mum Anne, as a frequent flyer at Metallica concerts around the world. We bonded very quickly in the Snake Pit. We chatted, shared life stories, talked about cute flightless birds, and arrived at common ground.
At events like these I feel like Russell, in an ageless space where every experience is Christmas, New Year’s Eve, family, and joy from one gig to the next. I think we all get a taste of that.
As the band say: We’ll never stop, we’ll never quit – ‘cause we’re Metallica.
