OK. So all signs point to Metallica‘s new album hitting our earholes this October.
The band haven’t announced this officially, but the top-selling daily newspaper in Germany – Bild – reports that the thrashlords’ long-awaited 10th studio LP could land on Friday, October 14th.
It follows drum-tinkler Lars Ulrich’s report that ‘Tallica were hoping to drop the disc in “late 2016”.
The Danish stick elf also recently spoke to Citizens Of Humanity mag about the musical direction of the group’s anticipated Death Magnetic follow-up.
“It definitely sounds like Metallica. It’s probably a little less frenetic than the last record,” he said. “The last one [producer] Rick Rubin really encouraged us to for the first time be inspired by our past. It was the first time we sort of looked in the rearview mirror. This time around it’s a little bit of a different thing.”
He continued: “We’re not working with Rick, we’re working with the engineer from the last record, who’s producing, Greg Fidelman. So there’s some of the same production elements at play, but we’re expanding a little bit on the sonics. It’s probably a bit more of a diverse record than the last one. It’s exciting, but I don’t have quite the perspective yet.”
Metallica’s main mouthpiece also addressed the eight-year gap between studio albums, which is the longest of the band’s whole career:
“I think what’s happened is our families and our domestic responsibilities are so important to us now, so we just have a new model. We’re sort of constantly doing something but never to the point of the needle going in the red, but Metallica really hasn’t sort of shut down since around 2005, and it’s a model that works for us.
We never work at 110 percent to the point where we drive ourselves nuts, but are sort of constantly working at two-thirds, you know — when we make the record we’re writing and we’re recording, but we’re doing it incrementally. There’s always stuff going on. It’s the way we like it. It keeps us engaged.”
Late last year, Ulrich and James Hetfield also starred in a little video that gave us a bit of a sneak peak at some of the fat riffs on the band’s new album.
Check ’em all, below.
