Australian Red Cross Lifeblood has seen donation surges like this only a handful of times, during the Black Saturday bushfires, the COVID-19 pandemic, and after the Bali bombings. Last week, heavy metal fans triggered the same response, without a disaster in sight.
Metallica’s first Australian tour in more than a decade has generated one of the biggest blood donation surges on record, with 8,800 people rolling up their sleeves in the first week alone. The campaign, which offered fans a limited-edition t-shirt designed by the band’s artist SQUINDO in exchange for blood, plasma, or platelet donations, resulted in a 77 per cent increase compared to the week before it launched.
“We’ve only seen these kinds of numbers in our capital city centres around natural disasters or events like bushfires, COVID, and the Bali Bombings,” a Lifeblood spokesperson said.
The partnership between the American band’s All Within My Hands foundation and Australian Red Cross Lifeblood saw donation centres across Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney break records throughout November. Melbourne’s CBD donor centre recorded the most donations in a single week at any donor centre ever, with almost 2,000 donations. Perth’s CBD centre logged its best two weeks in history, collecting more than 1,800 donations and attracting 300 new donors.
Sydney recorded its biggest donation week ever with 1,682 collections, including an all-time single-day record of 265 donations. Brisbane collected the highest-ever blood donations over a two-week period with 1,160 donations, while Adelaide’s Regent Donor Centre saw its busiest week in five years.
The campaign recruited nearly 2,000 first-time donors, people who had never given blood, plasma, or platelets before. Among the donors was Michael Kavanagh, a devoted Metallica fan who made his 470th donation before the Sydney show.
Lifeblood’s executive director of donor experience, Cath Stone, described the band’s commitment as “a selfless act that will have a lifesaving impact on so many individuals and their families.” The campaign comes at a critical time, with blood demand at a 12-year high and plasma demand at record levels.
Each donation can save up to three lives, helping people living with cancer and immune deficiencies, new mothers, trauma patients, and those undergoing surgery. The Australian campaign builds on Metallica’s partnership with the American Red Cross during the US leg of their M72 world tour, which collected more than 2,000 blood and platelet donations.
The band’s touring schedule allowed Lifeblood to run targeted two-week campaigns in each capital city, with donors collecting their exclusive t-shirts—featuring the lyric “A Sea of Hearts Beat As One” inside a blood drop at CBD centres in the weeks surrounding each concert.
