METALLICA Performs 'Hardwired' Song Live For First Time, Releases New Album Trailer

METALLICA performed its new song "Hardwired" live for the first time Saturday night (August 20) during the band's headlining concert at the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Video and audio footage of the performance is available below.

"The song 'Hardwired', the first time we played that all in the same room was this Monday, so this is as fresh off the assembly line as rock and roll gets," METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich told Fox 9. "So, it's been an intense week and we're excited about launching the next chapter of METALLICA's career here in Minneapolis."

METALLICA became the second ever band to rock U.S. Bank Stadium, which sold out in less than ten minutes after tickets went on sale this past March.

"It never gets old," Ulrich said. "If it ever gets old, punch me. Slap me around do something. Now there are 55,000 people out there. It's pretty crazy. It does not get old. It gets cooler and cooler actually as we go along."

Ulrich told StarTribune.com in a locker room before showtime: "This place looks amazing from our vantage point. I got goose bumps looking at those 50,000 purple seats and knowing the history the color purple has in this town."

"Hardwired" is taken from METALLICA's tenth studio album, "Hardwired...To Self-Destruct", which will be released on November 18 via Blackened Recordings. The long-awaited follow-up to 2008's "Death Magnetic" consists of two discs, containing a dozen songs and nearly 80 minutes of music.

The drummer talked to Rolling Stone about the creation of "Hardwired". He said: "That's actually the last song we wrote for the record. We started this album by throwing different ideas around. The shape of it, as a collection of songs, didn't come into focus until we were deep into it. At that point, the songs were getting tighter, shorter and leaner.

"A couple of months ago, we were sitting there taking stock of the record and thought maybe we should write one more fast, little crazy song, and that became 'Hardwired'. It just kind of happened. I think James [Hetfield] and I wrote and recorded it in less than a week, which, for us, is basically a nanosecond."

A newly released trailer for "Hardwired...To Self-Destruct", is available below.

"Hardwired...To Self-Destruct" was produced by Greg Fidelman with METALLICA frontman James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich. The band recorded the disc at its own studio and is still putting the finishing touches on the LP. Ulrich told Rolling Stone: "We have all but one of the songs mixed and done. In the last two or three days, Greg was going to mix the one called 'Spit Out the Bone' — working title 'CHI' — and all of a sudden Rob [Trujillo, bass] showed up in the control room yesterday to work on it. So what the fuck do I know? It's pretty much done. We should have that last song mixed this weekend."

According to Ulrich, METALLICA wrote most of the songs for "Hardwired...To Self-Destruct" in the fall of 2014 and the spring of 2015. The band's initial goal with the new record was "to continue where we left off," the drummer said. "Since 'Death Magnetic', we've been on a roll: We did the Lou Reed stuff, a Ronnie Dio-RAINBOW medley, a DEEP PURPLE cover and obviously the ['Through The Never'] movie took two years. Greg Fidelman has been working with us full time since then. We haven't had time to sit down and asses what we're doing. So it wasn't until farther into the process that we took stock of what we were doing and asked what we were trying to say with the album. That's when things came more into shape and became more coherent. But we didn't work with a mission statement."

Asked about his previous comment that the songs on "Hardwired" would sound "less frenetic" than those on "Death Magnetic", Ulrich explained: "Most of the songs are simpler. We introduce a mood and we stick to it, rather than songs we've done where one riff happens and we go over here and then over there and becomes a journey through all these different soundscapes. The songs are more linear. And by 'less frenetic,' I mean there are certainly less starts and stops in the songs. It cruises along a little bit more than the last record."

Lars also talked about how the "Kill 'Em All" and "Ride The Lightning" reissues affected the making of "Hardwired". He said: "I can't say that there was a magical moment where we're listening to 'Metal Militia' and wrote a song. But we did play 'Kill 'Em All' in its entirety at the Orion festival in Detroit in 2013. That was the first time I really got into that record. Early on, I was dismissive of that record because 'Ride The Lightning' and 'Master Of Puppets' may be a little more intellectually stimulating and challenging — they were deeper records — and it wasn't until 2013 when we played it that I realized 'Kill 'Em All' had a cohesiveness. It had its own thing with the speed, but it's simpler — the songs are longer but not quite as progressive. It's a world all its own. And I think there are some elements of that that rubbed off into this. I'd say there's a trace of residue from rediscovering 'Kill 'Em All' that crept into the songwriting."

"Hardwired...To Self-Destruct" will be issued on double CD, vinyl and digital download. A deluxe version will feature a bonus disc containing the riffs that formed the origins of the album along with "The Lords Of Summer", which the band debuted on tour a couple of years ago.