METALLICA To Announce 2018 North American Tour On Monday?

METALLICA is teasing a special announcement that will be delivered on Monday, February 26 via the band's official web site and social media channels.

Although there has been no official word on the matter, the group is widely expected to reveal the details of a late summer and early fall 2018 North American arena tour.

Adding credence to the rumors is the fact that Las Vegas, Nevada's T-Mobile Arena; Buffalo, New York's KeyBank Center; Lincoln, Nebraska's Pinnacle Bank Arena; Indianapolis, Indiana's Bankers Life Fieldhouse; Sacramento, California's Golden 1 Center; Kansas City, Missouri's Sprint Center; and Sioux Falls, South Dakota's Denny Sanford PREMIER Center all shared the exact same video earlier today (see below).

METALLICA was one of six artists — and one of only two rock acts, the other being TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA — to sell more than one million concert tickets in North America in 2017, a feat they accomplished in just 26 performances.

The "WorldWired" trek was the fifth-highest grossing tour of 2017, with 1.5 million tickets sold and $153 million earned. The band was also the top-selling rock act of the year and had the third best-selling rock album.

Touring in support of its latest album, "Hardwired… To Self-Destruct", that arrived in November 2016, METALLICA launched the world tour in Latin America a month before the disc's release. In early 2017, prior to the North American stadium tour, the band made festival appearances and headlined concerts at venues in Asia, Europe and Latin America.

Although METALLICA played U.S. stadiums last summer, the band was mostly indoors for the first leg of its European tour last fall.

METALLICA's European tour included the first drone swarm for a major touring act. It consisted of 120 autonomous micro drones that emerge from the main-stage prop lifts during the song "Moth Into Flames" and swarm into several formations over the band's heads, according to Pollstar.