Metallica's Much Awaited Ninth Studio Album

On February 9, 2006, Lars Ulrich revealed that the band had begun writing material for their ninth album in an interview at the Sundance Festival: "We're having fun, writing, jamming and hanging. It's all good — no psychiatrists." The band confirmed they had chosen veteran music producer Rick Rubin to produce their ninth studio album. Lars on the upcoming album:“We're actually not recording right now. I know everybody, nowadays, it's like, if you're in the studio, everybody presumes you're recording or making a record, which, of course, we technically are. But the difference between this time and last time is that last time there was no real separation between the writing process and the recording process; it was one thing, and that was the whole kind of 'St. Anger' experiment — to do away with the separate processes of that, and nobody brought in any pre-recorded stuff or ideas; it was just make it up on the spot, be in the moment, put the fucking thing out and next time remember to put the snare on, all that stuff — we've covered that. So this time we are doing exactly what we did on all the other albums — first we're writing, then we're recording. The only difference is — and this is kind of where it gets a little gray area, next-level shit — is that we're writing where we record. So we're writing here at HQ because this is our home, our pad, our hood, our thing. On all the earlier albums... we wrote the 'black' album at my house and recorded it in L.A., we wrote the 'Justice' album at my house and recorded it in L.A., we wrote the 'Puppets' album at James' house and recorded it in Denmark, blah blah blah. But now we're writing in the studio. We show up here five days a week, we get together, we listen to some riff tape from Madrid or Glasgow or Peoria, Illinois, and we sit down and go, 'That riff' and 'That riff,' and then we spend the next six hours trying to remember how to write songs, and then we go pick our kids up and then we come back the next morning and do it all over again.[15]„ —Lars UlrichIn a recent interview on Bruce Dickinson’s BBC6 radio show, Lars Ulrich stated that Metallica has a goal of a September, 2008 release for the new album, and stated that the recording process was finalizing, with six weeks left.