Metallica sessions "frighteningly tame"

Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich told a New York radio program on Friday night (March 2nd) that the band will lay down 14 songs for its ninth studio album, which the group will begin recording next Monday (March 12th) in San Francisco. Ulrich said on the Friday Night Rocks show, "We started out about six months ago with about 25 songs and now we've narrowed those down to 14, and we're gonna start recording 14 songs next Monday. So we're all pretty stoked."

Unlike the troubled, turbulent sessions for the band's last album, 2003's St. Anger, Ulrich told us that pre-production for the new effort has had a whole different vibe: "It's frighteningly tame (laughs). The four of us show up and we hang out and we have a great time, and there are no psychiatrists in sweaters, there are no film crews, it's very much like it used to be. It's pretty mellow around here. All that St. Anger stuff seems like a movie (laughs)."

Of course, the drummer is jokingly referring to Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, the documentary that chronicled the making of St. Anger.

Ulrich acknowledged on Friday night that American fans were disappointed that the band will tour in Europe and not the U.S. for the second summer in a row. But he added, "All our American fans out there must rest assured that there will be no end to the love coming everybody's way in the next couple of years with the new record and so on."

The drummer also said he was "sure in his heart" that Metallica would play the entire Master of Puppets album live in the U.S., as it did last year in Europe.

The group plans to work in the studio until early June, take a break for its European tour, then finish recording in August. As for whether Metallica will release the new album in 2007, Ulrich said, "I'd like to try and get it out this year, I hope we can get it out this year. If it doesn't come out this year, then it will be out at the very beginning of next year."
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