Metallica and Seether to tour S. Africa

Metallica will travel to South Africa in March to headline the country's biggest international music festival ever, according to the band's official web site. The Coca-Cola Colab Massive Mix festival will take place on March 18th in the city of Centurion, March 21st in Durban and March 25th in Cape Town. The shows will mark Metalica's first visit to the continent. Other artists confirmed to appear at the 12-hour concerts include Seether, Collective Soul, Simple Plan, Fatboy Slim and a number of local artists.

Seether is originally from South Africa and frontman Shaun Morgan told us that the country has a vibrant rock scene: "There's a big scene, it's just not very well supported by labels, you know. The national radio station does its job of promoting bands at night, when the rock show comes on. But there's a lot of great bands out there that we're fans of, that when we were coming up, they were at about the same level as we were. We just got signed."

Seether perform on Friday, January 13th on NBC-TV's The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. The band is headlining the 2006 Sno-Core Tour, beginning on January 20th in Lubbock, Texas.

Metallica returned to the studio at the end of 2005 and has been working on material for its next album, due out later this year or early in 2007.