METALLICA: Finnish Concert Sells Out In Less Than 30 Minutes

Tickets for METALLICA's July 15 concert at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki, Finland reportedly sold out less than 30 minutes after they went on sale this morning (Wednesday, February 28). As previously reported, METALLICA's July 12 concert at Stadion in Stockholm, Sweden and July 10 gig at Valle Hovin Stadion in Oslo, Norway took less than an hour and a half to sell out Monday morning (February 26).

METALLICA "Sick of the Studio '07 Tour" dates so far:

Jul. 01 - Werchter, BEL @ Rock Werchter Festival
Jul. 03 - Athens, GRE @ Rockwave Festival
Jul. 05 - Vienna, AUT @ Rotundenplatz
Jul. 10 - Oslo, NOR @ Valle Hovin Stadion
Jul. 12 - Stockholm, SWE @ Stadion
Jul. 13 - Aarhus, DEN @ Vestereng
Jul. 15 - Helsinki, FIN @ Olympic Stadium
Jul. 18 - Moscow, RUS @ Lushniki Stadium

METALLICA producer Rick Rubin told MTV.com two weeks ago that he wants the band to make a "defining" album when they enter the studio next month. Rubin admitted he was "really nervous" about working with the group after seeing the candid 2005 documentary about their near-breakup, "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster", but said that the band is now the opposite of how they appeared in the film. Rubin said, "They're really productive, really communicative — it seems like they really like being in the room together. It's a great process. They say they're more excited than they have been in a long time about making music...I asked them not to reinvent themselves so much as to make a defining album, like the purest of what METALLICA is."

Drummer Lars Ulrich told Rolling Stone magazine that Rubin wants to make the band sound like "the METALLICA that made them METALLICA without going backward."

METALLICA hopes to release its ninth studio effort by the end of the year.

(Thanks: Johan Mörling)