LARS ULRICH: METALLICA Is Making ‘Glacial’ Progress On New Album

Metallica 2019

During a new Classic Rock interview celebrating the 40th anniversary of DIAMOND HEAD‘s Lightning To The Nations album, Lars Ulrich was asked about the progress of the songwriting sessions for METALLICA‘s follow-up to 2016’s Hardwired… To Self-Destruct record.

“[It’s been] glacial,” Lars responded. “These are the craziest of times and nothing is letting up. There’s a little bit of movement [in that direction], but it’s hard to do a lot when we’re not together.”

In the previous issue of Classic Rock magazine, Ulrich promised the follow-up to Hardwired…To Self Destruct will be the best album the band has ever made.

“It’s the heaviest thing, the coolest,” Lars said. “But all kidding aside, if it wasn’t because we thought that the best record was still ahead of us, then why keep doing it? In METALLICA, we love the creative process, and it’s hard for me to imagine that we’ll ever stop making records.”

In a recent interview with NMEUlrich was asked if he has found this lockdown period creatively productive.

“I’m not sure — it’s not easy, but we’ve been doing what we can. We’ve been exchanging ideas back and forth,” he responded. “The hardest thing about being in four different spaces is that there’s no software that can have us all play in real time to reach other. So I can play something and send it to the next guy and then he can play on it and he can send it to the next guy, or vice versa, but we can’t play at the same time so it takes the impulsivity and the momentary energy out of the occasion.

He continued: “I’ve talked to some people in technology about how close we are to being able to all play in real time with each other, but that hasn’t been cracked yet.

“If it is, we’ll maximize it, but for now, we’re in this bubble for a couple of weeks, and we’re looking forward to seeing if at some point this fall, we can get back into another bubble where we write and play and maybe even record — so we’re looking forward to the possibilities on that one.”

When asked when fans can expect new music from METALLICALars said: “Not soon enough! Right now, I’d say the hardest thing about all this is trying to plan, because five minutes later, those plans change — that’s just the nature of the state of the world at the moment and we’re going to have to accept and surrender to it.

“I think it’s a good reminder of the fragility of the world and how maybe we should occasionally pause and be a little bit more respectful and appreciative of what we have and understand how quickly it can derail in terms of how we arrogantly expect everything to be way we wanted as a human race.”