METALLICA To Start Work On New Album 'Soon'

METALLICA is scheduled to enter the studio "soon" to begin work on its next full-length album, tentatively due in 2014. Speaking to RollingStone.com, the band's guitarist, Kirk Hammett, stated about the status of the songwriting process for the next CD, "Right now, we're kind of preoccupied with dealing with this 3D movie that we shot up in Canada last month. So that's kind of taking our time right now — that's the priority, to deal with that. But once we're done with that, we're going to start hunkering down and putting riffs together. That's all going to happen soon." Asked if METALICA's next album will once again be helmed by producer Rick Rubin, who worked on 2008's "Death Magnetic", Kirk said, "I really don't have an answer about Rick Rubin, although his name certainly comes up."

Hammett was also asked about the recent RollingStone.com readers' poll where METALLICA's third LP, "Master Of Puppets", was voted the "Greatest Heavy Metal Album Of All Time."

"[That was] amazing," Kirk said. "Totally and completely amazing to me. That album, for me, is my favorite METALLICA album. We had been playing together as a band with that lineup for about three years. We were definitely peaking, and 'Master Of Puppets', in my opinion, was the sound of a band really gelling and really learning how to work well together. At the time, we were just making another album. We had no idea it would have such a range of influence that it went on to have. It was the first time that we could spend time in the studio and work on guitar sounds for a couple of days, really experiment with different sounds and overdubs. It was just a good time for me . . . and I played a lot of poker with [late bassist] Cliff Burton in the studio. We'd just play poker, wait for Lars [Ulrich, drums] to finish a track — which would sometimes be days — and we'd be bored."

"Death Magnetic" was METALLICA's last under its contract with Warner Music Group — where the band has been making records since 1984.

METALLICA frontman James Hetfield told The Pulse Of Radio about the end of the band's contract with Warner, "It's kind of a good feeling to feel that you're free from any piece of paper that binds you to something. But over our career, we've learned a lot about record companies, the goods and evils of the business and this and that, and we're not very focused on that right now. It is what it is, and when it becomes time for us to either renegotiate or shop around or do things ourselves or something like that, we don't know. There's nothing but options, which is great."

METALLICA's 3D movie will reportedly mix concert footage with a storyline.

The band is financing the project itself and has hired "Predators" director Nimród Antal to get behind the camera. Antal filmed METALLICA's three concerts in Vancouver, Canada for use in the movie.

The show featured a brand new 140-foot-by-50-foot stage that included what a post at the band's web site called "colossal components and striking visual elements spanning METALLICA's entire 30-year career."

Photo below courtesy of Metallica.com