Metallica to make "defining" album

Metallica producer Rick Rubin told MTV this week that he wants the band to make a "defining" album when they enter the studio next month. Rubin admitted he was "really nervous" about working with the group after seeing the candid 2005 documentary about their near-breakup, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, but said that the band is now the opposite of how they appeared in the film. Rubin said, "They're really productive, really communicative -- it seems like they really like being in the room together. It's a great process. They say they're more excited than they have been in a long time about making music...I asked them not to reinvent themselves so much as to make a defining album, like the purest of what Metallica is."

Drummer Lars Ulrich told Rolling Stone magazine that Rubin wants to make the band sound like "the Metallica that made them Metallica without going backward."
Regarding his other high-profile clients, Linkin Park, Rubin said, "They really are reinventing themselves. It doesn't sound like rap-rock...I've heard guys in the band say that it transcends everything they've done before, like it puts them in a whole different light in their minds, and they really like that."
Rubin, who just won a Grammy as Producer of the Year, may also work with Weezer and U2 later in the year. His past work includes albums by Slipknot, System Of A Down, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Johnny Cash.
Linkin Park's album is tentatively due out this spring, while Metallica hopes to release its ninth studio effort by the end of the year.
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