Metallica Las Vegas

Metallica play heavy metal at its most physical: down-picked riffs locked to double-time drumming, songs that turn on sudden shifts of tempo and weight, and a voice that barks through the verses and then drops, without warning, into something close to a hymn.

The band's method has stayed constant since the start. Songs are built in sections rather than verses and choruses, often running long and changing shape two or three times before they end. Guitar parts are written as interlocking rhythm rather than decoration. The words deal in anger, fear, death and injustice, delivered flat and without irony. Around that core the sound has moved: from the speed and density of the earliest records, through mid-tempo writing built for far larger rooms, and back toward something rawer.

Metallica formed in 1981 around James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, and settled into its long-running shape with Kirk Hammett on lead guitar. Kill 'Em All, Master of Puppets, ...And Justice for All, Metallica, Load, Reload, St. Anger, Death Magnetic and 72 Seasons map four decades of that work, which has brought multiple Grammy Awards and a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Live, the reputation rests on precision as much as force. The playing is exact, the tempo changes land cleanly, and the riffs stay legible however loud it gets. Four decades in, the energy has not slackened. Crowds sing the guitar parts as readily as the words, and a room full of people doing that at once is what the whole thing is built for.

It is for anyone who wants metal played by a band that helped define what the word means: loud, disciplined, and unsentimental about everything except the music.