Metallica released the single “Lux Æterna” on November 28, 2022, opening the campaign for 72 Seasons. The song arrived alongside a Tim Saccenti-directed music video, an album announcement and plans for the M72 World Tour. In just over three minutes, listeners had their first taste of the record.
Written by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, “Lux Æterna” leaned into the early metal influences Hetfield enjoyed playing. In a December 2022 band video quoted by Revolver, he connected its riff to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and described the song as easy to write, record and perform. “It’s just fun and makes me move,” he said. That sense of enjoyment ran through his explanation: the song recalled the band’s early-1980s approach, with speed and a buoyant mood at its center.
The recording belonged to a considerably longer project. Metallica recorded and mixed 72 Seasons at their HQ in San Rafael, California, from March 2021 through November 2022, with Greg Fidelman producing alongside Hetfield and Ulrich. The album followed 2016’s Hardwired…To Self-Destruct. Its title referred to the first 18 years of a person’s life and the beliefs and patterns carried from childhood into adulthood.
Hetfield had another title in mind. Speaking with Steffan Chirazi for So What! in 2023, he explained that he wanted to name the album after its lead single. The idea of an enduring inner light summed up the songs for him, but the other choice won the vote. “And I was out-voted, which is great,” he said. He felt 72 Seasons gave listeners more to consider. His preferred title still left a visible mark: Hetfield associated yellow with light and goodness, and said the album’s color came from “Lux Æterna.”
Designer David Turner traced the same connection in a separate So What! interview. Hearing the song led him to think about how eternal light might look, and he settled on an intensely bright yellow. Black supplied the darkness that also belonged to the record. The single artwork reduced that contrast to a figure and an angular, M-shaped shadow against the yellow background. Turner was thinking about people scrolling through music on a phone as much as large advertising displays. The simple image was designed to catch attention at that small scale, with the colors connecting the single to the wider album campaign.
Light also shaped the video, filmed in Los Angeles on November 3, 2022. Hetfield described Saccenti’s method as directing lighting and laser changes during the performance, treating the shoot much like a live production.
The single’s radio run began before the full album arrived. “Lux Æterna” spent 11 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, starting in December 2022. 72 Seasons followed on April 14, 2023, with the song sixth in its 12-track sequence. Later in 2023, the title track and “Too Far Gone?” also reached No. 1 on Mainstream Rock Airplay, making this the first Metallica album to produce three leaders on that chart.
