20 Times Rock + Metal Bands Played Their New Album in Full on Tour

Playing albums in full is quite commonplace in today’s touring climate, but the feat is typically reserved for anniversary celebrations, not a brand new album. Still, a number of rock and metal bands have made the daring decision to play their latest record in its entirety on the road, and we’ve rounded up 20 instances in which it’s happened.

As excited as anyone in a band is to play some new material after running through their older songs a few hundred — if not thousands of — times, the reality is that it just never makes a whole lot of sense to bust out about 10 new songs on tour. The die-hard fans may want to hear a lot of new tracks, but there will always be a handful of people who are seeing the band for the first time and, well, they want to hear the hits! Who could blame them?

Others, such as Iron Maiden, tend to not fall under this category and the metal legends often play a handful of new songs on the road, many of them stretching into the seven- or eight-minute territory and beyond, meaning a large portion of the set is reserved for the latest standouts. Still, they’ve only done the full album play just once.

Two bands in here even toured their album when it came out and later embarked on a 10th anniversary tour and played it in full again. Of the 20 groups here, just one has been bold enough to do this with two separate new albums, but they’re a quirky bunch anyway so perhaps it’s not all too surprising.

To see 20 Times Rock + Metal Bands Played Their New Album in Full on Tour, scroll through the gallery below.

Note: We did find instances where some bands played their new record once or twice on tour, but we elected not to showcase those as they were more specialty shows than a proper tour behind the full album.