Metallica ready album

Drummer Lars Ulrich has claimed that the new Metallica album will contain "nutty-ass" material with "more dynamic within the songs". That's just the kind of fighting talk we wanna hear from the metal overlords reports XFM.co.uk

Speaking at a news conference for the Bonnaroo Festival, Lars Ulrich said that the new album - the somewhat belated follow-up to 2003's 'St Anger' - is a "couple of nips and tucks" away from completion and is on target for its mooted September release.

He said: "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 further revealed that the band entered the studio with 26 songs which were then cut down to 14 once work had started with producer Rick Rubin.

As work progressed, the band further eliminated three songs to a final track listing of eleven tracks though "length issues" may result in yet another cull.

Explained Ulrich: "These are long songs ... we're talking seven-minute, eight-minute, nine-minute nutty-ass songs.

"We don't make them long or short on purpose; you just kind of do what feels natural. We're not really gonna edit them, (so) we're gonna lose another one at some point in the next month or so and probably end up with ten."

Enthusing further, Ulrich told fans to expect an album that's "definitely pretty all over the place. There's a lot of variation, a lot of fast, slow, melodic ... kind of hardcore, nutty super-fast speed stuff. It's a little more like how some of the earlier records were a little more dynamic within the songs."

British fans may even get a taste of the as-yet-untitled album when Metallica headline the Reading and Leeds Festivals over the August Bank Holiday Weekend.