No New METALLICA Album Before 2014 At The Earliest, Says LARS ULRICH

On Wednesday, July 25, Todd Hancock of the Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada radio station 99.3 The Fox conducted an interview with METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich. You can now listen to the entire 20-minute chat using the SoundCloud player below.

When asked how close METALLICA fans are to seeing a new studio album from the band, Ulrich said, "I wouldn't use the word 'close.' I mean, obviously, in the context of, say, the age of planet Earth, we're pretty close. But in the context of, say, other things, there may be one or two football seasons, or one or two baseball seasons, or one or two hockey seasons… We've gotta do this movie, and we're gonna get back to writing when we've done this movie. I would say late '13 or early '14. It's difficult to imagine… I think even late '13 may be a bit optimistic. I would say hopefully we can realistically get a record out probably about a year and half from now, so maybe early '14."

METALLICA's 3D movie begins filming later this summer and will 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 will film METALLICA's August 24-25 concerts at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, Canada for use in the movie. "The rest of the film will be shot the next two or three weeks after the shows in Vancouver, into the middle to the third week of September," Ulrich said.

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

When asked if METALLICA's movie will contain any "The Song Remains The Same"-style fantasy sequences from the group, Ulrich told Billboard.com, "Yeah, I've got my horse and my sword and my battle armor. Not quite that, but the are stranger references than 'The Song Remains The Same'. I certainly don't mean to be disrespectful in that way; I have nothing but love for LED ZEPPELIN and 'The Song Remains The Same'. [The film] is a narrative, and the rest of the stuff that goes on outside of the concert is not going to feature members of METALLICA... in any way, shape or form. It's a split narrative that kind of runs parallel to the concert."