METALLICA To Play Berlin In September?

According to Metallicapage.de, the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung BZ reported this past Wednesday (May 21) that METALLICA will be the first band to perform at the new O2 World arena in Berlin on September 12. It should be noted, however, that METALLICA has not yet officially announced any shows beyond its August 24 appearance at the Reading festival in Reading, UK.

As previously reported, METALLICA has tapped Greg Fidelman an engineer/producer who has worked with current METALLICA producer Rick Rubin on albums for the RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS, SYSTEM OF A DOWN, SLIPKNOT and AUDIOSLAVE, among others to mix its new CD, which is due out in September.

During a May 14 interview with The Pulse of Radio, Ulrich said that the group hopes to wrap up work on the album in time for the Memorial Day weekend holiday. "It's pretty close," he said. "We've got four studio days next week to just patch up. If there's a last minute, you know, 'that needs this...' or but pretty much done. Yeah, it's pretty much done. And then they start mixing the week after."

Lars also took part in a conference call on May 15 to promote this year's Bonnaroo festival, which METALLICA will headline on June 13, Ulrich told reporters that METALLICA recently met with a graphic designer to begin planning the new CD package, though there's no confirmed title for the album yet and the songs still have working names.

"We sort of promised ourselves that unlike all the records we made in the '90s, [which] were just completely stressed-out and just nutty, that we were gonna try and have a little more sane environment and we've actually, surprising mostly to ourselves, been able to keep to that," Ulrich said, according to Billboard.com. "We've pretty much finished the music now, so all the next level stuff is just starting to go down."

The band next plays the Bonnaroo festival in mid-June, a series of European festivals, and the newly configured one-day Ozzfest this August in Dallas.