METALLICA To Play Austria In July

METALLICA will play a special open-air concert at Rotundenplatz in Vienna, Austria on July 5. There will be exclusive Wavebreaker tickets for members of the official METALLICA fan club, MetClub. The pre-sale will start on February 24 at 9:00 a.m.

Commented the band: "The schedule is coming together and we've got another stop on our little European jaunt for you . . . drumroll, please . . . Vienna, Austria on July 5th at Rotundenplatz. And here's the cool part — this one is a METALLICA show, the first all-METALLICA show in Austria in over ten years! Okay, of course we will have a few cool opening bands, still to be determined, like a few other things on this tour, but your friends here are trying to bring you this information as it happens . . . day and night. Speaking of friends . . . if any of our metalli-friends in Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, or Liechtenstein want a dose of METALLICA this summer, you might want to check this show out because unfortunately it will be our only one in your neck of the woods. Also, the un-named tour is no longer without a name courtesy of MetClubber TR3NDKILLR . . . 'Sick of the Studio 07' . . . it's now, um, official."

As previously reported, METALLICA will headline the 11th edition of the Rockwave Festival, set to take place July at 1-3 Terra Vibe in Malakasa, Greece. METALLICA will perform on July 3. METALLICA has also been confirmed for the Werchter Rock festival on July 1 in Werchter, Belgium. More dates are expected to be announced soon.

METALLICA producer Rick Rubin told MTV.com last week 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: Scarcross)