METALLICA Announces Week-Long 30-Year Celebration In San Francisco

METALLICA's official web site has been updated with the following message:

"Thirty years of METALLICA... can you believe it? We think it's cause for a major celebration!

"You've been asking for a while now, 'Just what the hell are you going to do to mark 30 years as a band?' closely followed by, 'Why don't we have more exclusive shows for fan-club members?'

"We've heard you loud and clear and are beyond psyched to announce that the week of December 5, 2011 will be a full-on METALLICA week in the Bay Area, more specifically we will be playing four shows for Met Club members only at the historic Fillmore in San Francisco on December 5, 7, 9, and 10 to celebrate our 30th anniversary. These unique shows will include special guests and events, rare songs, varied set lists, odds and ends, and all the nutty stuff you expect from METALLICA... fun for the entire family!

"Come to the Bay Area and spend the week with us to not only close out 2011 out with a bang, but to celebrate over three decades worth of craziness.

"Participate in the entire week of festivities with special four-pack tickets (one ticket for each of the four shows) and automatic entry into the contests for various other special events, available for the clever price of $19.81 (get it??). If you can't join us for the full week, we'll have individual show tickets too and as you can see we're going back to early '80s ticket pricing (but not the hair!)... single-show tickets will be just $6.00 each. Both four packs and individual show tickets will be available for fan-club members only through a reservation system and we do have to add facility fees, blah, blah. Clubbers can log in for all the details... we're taking reservations through August 8.

"Hope to see you for a week of madness in December!"

Although METALLICA is currently completing work on a surprise collaborative album with Lou Reed, the band is also about to start writing songs for its 10th studio effort on its own. Producer Rick Rubin, who worked with the group for the first time on 2008's "Death Magnetic", told Billboard that he recently met with drummer Lars Ulrich and will return to San Francisco to sit down with the whole band and "explore what the focus is going to be this time around."

Rubin offered a hint of how that initial meeting with the band will go: "I'll ask a lot of questions and we'll probably listen to some of the riffs they've been writing. And usually I'll hear something that will sort of indicate the direction and then we'll talk about it from there."

Rubin did not give a timetable for when he thought METALLICA might begin recording.

The band revealed last month that the "secret recording project" it was working on in May was a collaborative album with Reed, the legendary singer and former VELVET UNDERGROUND frontman.

The project had apparently been in the works since Reed and METALLICA performed together at the 25th anniversary of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame at Madison Square Garden in October of 2009.

METALLICA has not indicated when or how the yet-to-be-titled album will be issued.