Frankfurt is currently gearing up for an absolute monster of a metal weekend. On Friday the 22nd and Sunday the 24th of May, Metallica are bringing their massive M72 World Tour to the Deutsche Bank Park, and they aren’t just doing a standard stadium run. They’re wheeling out their ‘No Repeat Weekend’ concept, a brilliantly mad format that practically guarantees even the most casual followers will end up shelling out for both nights. James Hetfield and the lads have committed to playing completely different sets on each night, meaning not a single track gets recycled. If you drag yourself along to both gigs, you’re essentially getting two entirely separate shows.

It’s a format the band has been dead set on since the World Magnetic Tour back in 2009, and it genuinely transforms a massive corporate gig into a live experience with surprising depth. Visually, they’ve chucked a massive 360-degree stage right in the middle of the pitch, effectively binning the idea of a ‘bad seat’. The crowd wraps all the way around, and the band plays to every corner of the stadium. Throw in a frankly absurd amount of pyro and a top-tier light show, and you’ve got a setup that turns the arena into a cathedral of heavy metal. The support acts aren’t messing about either. Friday night sees progressive titans Gojira and the sheer hardcore clout of Knocked Loose warming up the crowd, whilst Sunday relies on the groove-metal royalty of Pantera paired with the Swedish theatricals of Avatar.

This Frankfurt double-header officially kicks off the German leg of the M72 tour before the colossal machine rolls on to Zurich’s Stadion Letzigrund on the 27th and Berlin’s Olympiastadion on the 30th of May. While the Frankfurt dates are particularly special—being the only No-Repeat-Weekend on German soil—that late May weekend reveals a brilliant split screen of the country’s live music scene. Because while tens of thousands of metalheads will be flocking to the capital to watch the Californian multi-million-pound touring machine on the 30th, an entirely different, yet incredibly vital, grassroots movement is pulling together over in North Rhine-Westphalia on that exact same Saturday.

Over in Düsseldorf, preparations are already well underway for the long-running ‘Rock gegen Rechts’ festival, scheduled to take over the Ballonwiese in the Volksgarten on the 22nd of August. Proudly operating under the banner of ‘Love Music, Hate Fascism’, the free open-air event has long been a crucial platform for regional punk, rock, folk, and hip-hop acts to make a loud, unapologetic stand for tolerance and against the extreme right. The final lineup is still tightly under wraps for the coming weeks, but the organisers are already banking on a crowd of several thousand. However, keeping a festival of that size totally free and accessible doesn’t just happen by magic; it relies heavily on local solidarity and the graft of volunteer organisers.

To make sure the August event can stick to its ‘free and outdoors’ ethos, the team is hosting a crucial support tombola on the 30th of May. Clashing directly with Metallica’s Berlin gig, this event at BrauArt on Emmastraße in Oberbilk caters to a very different side of the alternative crowd. From 4 PM, punters can buy raffle tickets knowing every penny goes straight into funding the main festival. The prize pool is actually cracking—you’ve got a Fortuna Düsseldorf bundle featuring a 2024/25 squad-signed shirt, alongside signed vinyl, CD box sets, and merch from heavyweight local acts like the Broilers, Sondaschule, and Dritte Wahl. As Thomas Reucher, the chair of the organising charity, rightly points out, having massive national bands casually chucking in rare merch proves that the grassroots DIY scene still has the unwavering backing of the wider music community. Whether it’s stadium pyro in Frankfurt or buying raffle tickets in an Oberbilk pub to keep local punk alive, guitar music in Germany is clearly in incredibly rude health this summer.