METALLICA 'In The Fourth Inning' Of Band's Next Studio Album

METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich spoke to RollingStone.com about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band's follow-up to 2008's "Death Magnetic". "We're going through the grind," he said. "We're in there doing riffs and putting them into songs. We don't really write one song and then show up the next day and do another one. We just work on riffs and sections, connecting riffs and tempos and moods."

He continued: "We've been doing this, off and on, for the better part of a year. We're going to do these [European] dates this summer and then really hone down. I'd say that right now, we're in the fourth inning."

According to Lars, the four members of METALLICA plan on getting back together before the beginning of May to resume work on new material. "We're going to start talking about who is going to produce the album," Ulrich said. "We haven't started recording yet. But we are deep into the songwriting part of it."

METALLICA recently completed a South American tour where the band played a nearly all-request set, with 17 songs chosen online by fans prior to each gig and the last slot filled by the new track "Lords Of Summer".

Ulrich told RollingStone.com that "Lords Of Summer" "is fairly representative of where our creative headspace is at right now. It's one of those things that's like, 'Here, we're writing and we're creating.'"

Ulrich cautioned, however, that "Lords Of Summer" may not even end up on METALLICA's next album at all, or at least not in its current form. He explained, "We did the same thing when we went out and played a bunch of dates in 2006. We were writing and played two different new songs over the course of that summer, and none of them made the record (2008's 'Death Magnetic')."

The Metallica By Request tour will hit Europe this summer, with a single North American date confirmed in Montreal, as the band continues working on its 10th studio album.