METALLICA: New Single To Receive Exclusive Radio Premiere This Thursday

METALLICA's new single, "The Day That Never Comes", will be premiered exclusively on Zane Lowe's show on BBC Radio 1 this Thursday, August 21 between 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. UK time.

To listen to the program live via the Internet, go to this location.

A five-minute video clip containing behind-the-scenes footage from the video shoot for "The Day That Never Comes", which took place last month in Acton, California (about an hour's drive north of Los Angeles),can be viewed below.

METALLICA guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield told MTV.com that the clip won't be making any lofty political statements about the war in Iraq. Instead, it's a statement on humanity, helmed by acclaimed Danish director Thomas Vinterberg, who, along with Lars von Trier, co-founded the Dogme 95 movement in filmmaking. Hetfield said that when he was writing the song's lyrics, he never envisioned the video would look anything like this.

"That's the beauty, I think, of writing vague but powerful lyrics — that someone like a movie director can interpret it in his own way and obviously, someone creative is able to take the metaphors and apply them to whatever he needs in his own life," the frontman explained to MTV.com. "The main [theme of the video] is the human element of forgiveness and someone doing you wrong, you feeling resentment and you being able to see through that in the next situation that might be similar and not take your rage or resentment out on the next person and basically keep spreading the disease of that through life."

He added, "The one thing that I wasn't keen on here was Metallica plugging into a modern war or a current event [that] might be construed as some sort of political statement on our part. There are so many celebrities that soapbox their opinions, and people believe it's more valid because they're popular. For us, people are people — you should all have your own opinion. We are hopefully putting the human element in what is an unfortunate part of life. There are people over there dealing with situations like this, and we're showing the human part of being there.

"It's the forgiveness part — that is key," he continued. "METALLICA has never plugged into any current event visually, but this one is kind of a hotbed. People have very high opinions about this war, and we're trying to cut through all of that. The politics and the religion tend to separate people, and what we're trying to do is bring it together with the common thread of resentment and forgiveness."

METALLICA's new album, "Death Magnetic", is scheduled for release on September 12.

METALLICA debuted a new song called "Cyanide" during its headlining set on August 9 at Ozzfest, which took place at Pizza Hut Park in Frisco, Texas. This marked the first time that the band has performed any material in concert from "Death Magnetic". The rest of METALLICA's 17-song Ozzfest set featured a number of the band's classic tunes as well as a medley of songs from underground metal act MERCYFUL FATE, for which they were joined onstage by that Danish act's singer, King Diamond.