Metallica Unearth Rarities and Covers for Helping Hands Benefit Concert

Metallica have wrapped up their live activity for 2024, finishing things off with their regular Helping Hands concert in California.

The musical component of the heavy metal outfit’s All Within My Hands foundation, the Helping Hands concert series is a biannual affair which has been running since 2018.

With “aims to assist and enrich the lives of members of the communities who have supported the band for years, as well as encourage participation from fans and friends”, the previous events have been wildly successful, with the 2018 and 2020 editions raising over $1.3 million, and 2022 resulting in over $3 million in donations.

The latest Helping Hands concert took place on Friday (Dec. 13) at Inglewood, CA’s 6,000-seat YouTube Theater, with hosting duties performed by Jimmy Kimmel. The event also featured a handful of special guests, including Sammy Hagar and special guests Michael Anthony, Joe Satriani, and Kenny Aronoff, with classically-trained siblings SistaStrings also taking part.

As is tradition, the event featured a handful of deep cuts from the band’s back catalog, with this recent performance being no exception. Launching proceedings with a five-song acoustic set, both San Francisco singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Avi Vincour and pianist Henry Salvia were also on hand to aid in the performance.

The band’s acoustic set kicked off with a performance of “Low Man’s Lyric”, which hadn’t been played live since the band’s Reload tour in September 1998, before being followed by the first play-through of Diamond Head’s “Helpless” since 2018, and their first-ever rendition of Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “Away From Home”. Welcoming SistaStrings to the stage, the acoustic portion of the event wrapped up with versions of 2023’s “If Darkness Had a Son” and the enduring “Nothing Else Matters”.

The career-spanning electric set was slightly more traditional, featuring tracks from the band’s wider catalog. Alongside last year’s “Screaming Suicide”, Metallica leant into tracks from the likes of famed ’80s records Kill ‘Em All, Master of Puppets, and 1989’s …And Justice for All. While reintroducing “The Unforgiven II” to the live set for the first time since 2015, the band also welcomed Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament to the stage for a performance of “Hit the Lights”.

Metallica’s Helping Hands concert will also be uploaded to YouTube for streaming on Thursday (Dec. 19), while full details regarding how much was raised by the event is usually shared in the new year.