METALLICA To Perform In Saudi Arabia For First Time Ever

METALLICA will play its first-ever concert in Saudi Arabia next month.

The heavy metal giants will headline the opening night of the three-day Soundstorm festival in Riyadh on December 14.

Other artists scheduled to appear at the event include Pharrell Williams, Chris Brown, H.E.R., BLACK EYED PEAS, J Balvin and Anne-Marie, as well as DJs Tiesto and David Guetta.

More than 600,000 people reportedly attended last year’s Soundstorm.

Soundstorm, organized by Saudi music giants MDLBEAST, has been attracting some of the biggest acts in the region and the globe to Riyadh since its launch in 2019.

The festival site spans more than five and a half million square meters with park life areas for food outlets and street performers keeping festival goers entertained between sets at what’s been dubbed “the loudest week in Riyadh”.

Said METALLICA: “We’re not done with 2023 just yet, as an amazing opportunity has just come our way to perform at a major festival that we have never played in a part of the world we rarely get to visit.

“We’re excited to announce that on Thursday, December 14 we’ll be the first hard rock band to ever play at @MDLBeast’s Soundstorm Festival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

“Festival and single-day tickets are available now at mdlbeast.com.”

METALLICA made its Middle East live debut in 2011 at Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Park. They played the same venue two years later.

Before METALLICA performed in Abu Dhabi in 2013, drummer Lars Ulrich told The National: “When we were here a year and a half ago, it was really magical. Now, I don’t say that everywhere… there were so many different nationalities — a great energy and shared experience.

“When we started playing, there were so many parts of the world where the type of music that we were doing was not really accepted. There were a lot of places where people didn’t know what we were doing or didn’t have enough infrastructure to support a band like us. But it’s opening up. It’s changing and the world is shrinking. It’s great to be in the front lines.”

In October 2022, Saudi melodic death metal band IMMORTAL PAIN became the first group to perform heavy metal at a large public event when it played at Comic Con Arabia.

Back in October 2019, Saudi Arabia’s grindcore band CREATIVE WASTE played what is believed to have been the first public metal concert in the kingdom’s history. At the time, CREATIVE WASTE frontman Fawaz Al Shawaf told Metal Injection: “Leading up to the show, people, especially bands, were skeptical for the longest time, because they existed in the old generation. A lot of them were being conservative. They were worried. No one’s ready to take the risk. But, I mean, the ones who organized the show are actually basically newcomers and young. They didn’t even know what grindcore or death metal was. So they weren’t into extreme music, but they asked us, and I thought the idea was so crazy that I accepted it because it’s a part of the change.”

In early 2022, Saudi metal artist Meshari Sangora, who goes by the name “Dusk“, told Mille about the metal scene in the kingdom: “Yes, there was and still is a metal scene all over the kingdom — from bands that were formed in the late ’90s to the early 2000s and even up to today. Recently, places like Syrup in Riyadh and The Music Space in Jeddah have given the opportunity for indie musicians, including metal artists like myself, to express themselves. With all the changes that are happening and the continuous engagement on social media, more people are getting exposed to the genre. Which makes me see a great future for the metal scene and metal music in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia.”