Metallica Break Into Billboard’s Hot Trending Songs With “Lux Aeterna”

Following Metallica’s surprise album announcement and new single release last week, the band has unsurprisingly cracked Billboard’s Hot Trending Songs with their latest track, “Lux Aeterna.”

Billboard Charts’ official Twitter revealed the news today showcasing the single at number six on this week’s Hot Trending Songs. Interestingly, the charts also show Metallica’s “72 Seasons,” the title track for Metallica’s upcoming studio album, at number nine for this week’s charts. Provided “72 Seasons” hasn’t been released by the band yet it’s not clear exactly how or why this track ended up on Billboard’s charts. Possibly it’s a mistake or there’s confusion with the albums title itself, but so far “Lux Aeterna” is the only single Metallica has put out for their upcoming eleventh studio album, 72 Seasons

While it’s no surprise seeing Metallica’s latest single perform so well only a week after its release, as they are still the world’s most successful metal band, “Lux Aeterna” is performing better than Metallica’s prior lead single “Hardwired” from their 2016 LP Hardwired…To Self-Destruct. Despite now garnering over 127 million streams, on Billboard’s 2016 Hot Rock and Alternative Charts “Hardwired” came in at number nine at the time of its release. Overall, “Hardwired” showcased a nice return to Metallica’s youthful thrash sound, which is fairly similar to the sonic aesthetic heard on “Lux Aeterna.” However, in 2022 Metallica has broken through pop-culture in a way they’ve not done previously, which could very well be correlated with new single’s success.

Going beyond 2021’s massive reissue of the Black Album, the band’s highest selling album to date, 2022 saw Metallica in the spotlight of Netflix’sNFLX
hit show Stranger Things. Not only has this helped to expand Metallica’s appeal with younger audiences, specifically with their magnum opus “Master of Puppets,” but the band’s classic catalogue and sound is garnering lots of attention with “Master of Puppets” resurgence.

That being said, with Metallica’s returning to their roots more or less on “Lux Aeterna,” I’d wager a lot of the excitement and success seen from the single thus far comes from fans yearning for that ‘classic’ Metallica sound. And for what it’s worth, the song is getting fairly high praise amongst listeners in the metal and rock community. Of course Metallica’s latest song is far from being considered ground breaking, but the band hasn’t seen this much excitement circulating around their new music in quite some time.