Metallica still hasn't been booked for the Super Bowl halftime show, but the band will join Stephen Colbert's A Late Show: Super Bowl Edition live special Sunday night.
Metallica confirmed its participation earlier Wednesday via the band's official social media.
"We're celebrating Super Bowl LV with our friend [Stephen Colbert] on Sunday!" the band's statement reads. "Tune in to [The Late Show's] Super Bowl Edition at 11:35pm EST on CBS to catch our performance. #LSSC #LateShow"
This will be at least the third time Colbert has welcomed the Bay Area thrash metal legends to his stage. Metallica performed "Now That We're Dead" on the Late Show in 2017, while promoting Hardwired...To Self-Destruct. The band also performed and sat down for an interview with Colbert in 2013 on his satirical Colbert Report on Comedy Central.
Metallica has kept reasonably busy since the pandemic mostly shut down the live event industry last March. The band released its acoustic reimagined version of "Blackened" in May and its Encore Drive-In Nights live concert film hit theaters this past summer. The band's highly-anticipated S&M 2 live album dropped in late-August.
Later this past fall, Metallica raised over $1.3 million for charity with its virtual Helping Hands livestream concert.
Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield have all signaled that they have been working out new music for most of the year, but Ulrich has repeatedly lamented the challenges of writing virtually.
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