There's A "Very Good Chance" Of A New Metallica Album The Longer Quarantine Goes On

While Metallica have been keeping busy in coronavirus lockdown with their epic Metallica Mondays streams every single week, the band could soon be looking to other sources of creativity to pass the time: namely, making a new album.

Drummer Lars Ulrich has pondered the possibility of creating the follow-up to 2016's excellent Hardwired… To Self-Destruct remotely, considering that if everyone is still in the same position "six months from now or a year from now", there's a "very good chance" the metal heroes could begin work on album number 11.

In a live chat with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on April 28, Lars said (via Blabbermouth):

“Like I said, the guys in Metallica, as we sit here and go, well, maybe in a month or two from now, is there a chance that the four of us can be together maybe at our studio here in Northern California, if the quarantine and stay-at-home orders subside – so on and so forth.

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"So, right now, as everybody who has creative juices flowing through their veins, they’re being challenged to try to come up with new ways to be creative, and I think that those are wonderful takeaways from the devastation that’s happening all over the world at the moment.

“Everywhere in the world of not just music, but in the world of anything entertainment – obviously, film, theater, art; anything that has to do with creativity – I can guarantee there are thousands of conversations right now [about] how do we make records? How do we make filmed entertainment? How do we make art? How do we share it with this new paradigm that’s happening? What can it look like on the other side of the new normal?

"Even if you bring it into our world, the people that make all the software and all the stuff that all use to record are sitting right now trying to figure out how Lars and James [Hetfield] and Kirk [Hammett] and Rob [Trujillo] can make a Metallica record from four different locations in four different states. And that’s something that we’re obviously circling and very excited about…"

Lars continued that he and his bandmates have been "talking about how we can just be a band again" on weekly Zoom sessions, and are "really excited" about what that prospect looks like.

"So, will there be a Metallica quarantine record?" he concluded. "I can’t tell you, because, again, I don’t know how long the quarantine will last. But if you and I and the rest of the world are sitting here six months from now or a year from now, I’d say there’s a very good chance."

Quiz: How well do you know Metallica’s lyrics?

As well as a potential new album, Metallica fans also have S&M2 to look forward to this year.

On this week's Metallica Mondays, Lars explained that it was “definitely coming your way” at some point in 2020.

“I know there’s a lot of you guys that have asked and so here is what I can tell you: it has been completely remixed since it played in the movie theatres… since then, Greg Fidelman has remixed it and made it this much better, this much cooler, this much bigger, and fatter, and more whatever he does when he does all that,” he said.

“The video, the visual images have been embellished, it’s been re-edited by the same team – Joe and his crew, who edited the Through The Never film about six or seven years ago – so there’s a whole new visual thing happening, a whole new audio thing happening and it’s coming your way.

“Unfortunately because of the state of the world we’re not quite sure [when] – it’s pretty funny, it says here, ‘Don’t say August! (Laughs) Don’t say the actual month, don’t say coming in August!’ so I definitely won’t say coming in August, but hopefully the summer.

“As soon as we can get it to you, you know we’ll be there… S&M2 is definitely coming, thank you for your patience.”

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