METALLICA Bassist Says Upcoming Album Will Not Include Previously Performed Material

Last year, METALLICA performed two new tracks live in concert that have become known as "The New Song" and "The Other New Song". Earlier this year, bassist Robert Trujillo said in an interview that neither of those cuts was going to be included on the next studio album, but that parts of one of them might be reworked into other songs. Then METALLICA surprised the audience at their show in Bilbao, Spain on June 29, 2007 when they once again performed "The Other New Song".

Sweden's Close-Up magazine caught up with Trujillo in Stockholm, Sweden on July 12, 2007 and asked him: Will "The Other New Song" be on METALLICA's next album? "Well, I don't think so and the reason is we didn't record it!" laughed Trujillo. "We call the song we played the other night 'Vulturus'. I don't know if that's gonna be the official title of the song in the future. We enjoy playing that song, it's kind of a MISFITS-y kind of a jam. We had been rehearsing it in San Francisco and having a lot of fun playing it.

"I don't think we played it so well the other night [laughs]. It was horrible actually, it was really bad. We played it last year in Japan a couple of times and it went over really well there. I think this last time we played it we hadn't played it since we rehearsed in San Francisco. So it had been a couple of weeks and all of a sudden it's, 'Let's play this song,' and it’s like 'Wait, how does it go?'

"'Vulturus' exists kind of as a live song 'cause we've already played it. The other song that we used to do was a bit of an experiment. We thought it would sound good live and we had fun playing it live. We thought maybe it was a little long, but we thought there were some really great parts in that song. We were never completely dead-set on the arrangement of that song or it existing to be a track on the album. So we've basically dissected the best of that and married it into something that's also really slammin' and exciting. So one of the new songs you will kind of hear on the album and it's gonna be great. But we really wanna get these songs recorded — not these two, but our new material. We wanna save a lot for the album and bring it out fresh and ready to go. We're still in the first phase of the recording process right now, so we don't really wanna blow our water right now."

NOTE: "The Other New Song" has been rumored to be titled "Vulturous". However, the Close-Up reporter asked Robert Trujillo to spell the title and the bassist said "It's 'V-U-L-T-U-R-U-S' — all U's."

Trujillo's original English-language quotes were provided exclusively to BLABBERMOUTH.NET; the Close-Up article was published in Swedish.

Watch METALLICA performing "Vulturus" on August 15, 2006 at Seoul Olympic Main Stadium in Seoul, South Korea (professionally filmed video footage with soundboard audio):

Watch METALLICA performing the "first" new song ("The New Song") during their headlining appearance at the Gelredome in Arnhem, Holland on June 8, 2006: