Watch Metallica dust off I Disappear live for 80,000 French metal fans

Metallica’s M72 world tour is now well underway, metal’s biggest band setting up shop in various cities around the world with the promise of two nights and no repeats between setlists. 

Naturally, that has opened up opportunities for the band to break out their lesser played tunes in the setlists. In the tour’s opening dates in Amsterdam, they debuted 72 Seasons tracks Screaming Suicide, Sleepwalk My Life Away, If Darkness Had A Son, You Must Burn and the album’s title track.

Since then, we’ve seen the likes of Until It Sleeps pop up for the first time in 15 years and Blackened make a rare appearance. But perhaps one of the more surprising live rarities to re-appear came on the band’s first night at the Stade de France when they dusted off stand-alone single I Disappear, frontman James Hetfield even introducing it with a “here’s one we haven’t played in a while” disclaimer. 

Watch Metallica play I Disappear in France below. 

Released on May 9, 2000, I Disappear was a stand-alone single featured on the Mission: Impossible 2 soundtrack. To date, the track has been played live less than a hundred times in Metallica setlists, popping up in the band’s shows the year of release and again during their world tour after the release of the controversial St. Anger. 

Since then, the track has dropped off Metallica setlists almost entirely, played just once a year at most aside from rare resurgences in 2006 [where it was played twice], 2010 [4 times] and 2013 [3 times]. The band last played the single at their massive 40th Anniversary celebration in San Francisco in 2021. 

For all the controversy the band would be embroiled in around the 2000s – Napster, the departure of Jason Newsted,  Some Kind Of Monster – I Disappear remains a favourite track among fans, a blockbuster anthem for a blockbuster movie. 

Whether the song will pop up again in Metallica sets during the M72 run remains to be seen, but we dare say it won’t be the last surprise in their ever-shifting setlists. 

Source: loudersound.com