Metallica joined Stephen Colbert's A Late Show: Super Bowl Edition Sunday night to deliver its first public performance of 2021.
Flanked by a wall of neglected amplified cabinets and dust-gathering road cases, the band recorded the performance from its Bay Area headquarters in San Rafael, California.
After spending much of the prior three years touring the world in support of Hardwired...To Self-Destruct, Metallica planned to spend most of 2020 in North America, anchoring five major U.S. rock festivals and working on its next album.
With gathering restrictions related to pandemic have drastically limited the band's options, Metallica has done its part to keep providing fans the live heavy metal they're missing and continue supporting a number of philanthropic causes.
The band unveiled an ambitious concert film for drive-in movie theaters in August, a few weeks before dropping its S&M 2 live album. In November, the band raised over $1.3 million dollars for charity with its 'Helping Hands' virtual livestream concert fundraiser.
The special edition Late Show performance was at least Metallica's third time playing for Colbert. The band dropped by the Late Show in 2017 and previously visited Colbert's Comedy Central show for an interview in 2013.
While James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett had all expressed optimism about progress on the next Metallica album in 2020, Ulrich recently indicated that the band's virtual writing sessions had slowed to a mere "glacial" pace.