Metal giants, Metallica debuted their epic, eight-minute track The Lords of Summer at their concert in Bogotá, Colombia on Sunday night, but according to the band, while the track is “fairly representative” of their current “creative headspace” there’s no guarantee it will make it onto the new album.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich said the band like to keep their options open. “We did the same thing when we went out and played a bunch of dates in 2006,” he said. “We were writing and played two different new songs over the course of that summer, and none of them made the record [Death Magnetic].”
He said, elements of the aforementioned songs, creatively titled New Song 1 and New Song 2, were weaved into some of the album’s final cuts. “That’s how we work,” he explained. “Stuff just gets changed around, moved over and this goes over there and the rest of that gets sacked and that ends up in the intro in song five.”
“So who knows what’s going to happen with this stuff,” he said. “But we are off and running and have been creating away in the studio and now we’re going to go out and play and sweat and share and we’ve got some new music that we want to throw everybody’s way.”
Metallica are on the first leg of a tour they’ve dubbed Metallica by Request, which finds fans voting on the set list from their 140-or-so-track catalogue. One slot in the setlist is reserved for the new track. “Maybe by the time we get to Europe there will be a different song or different thing or different arrangement. Who knows?,” said Ulrich.
“We like to leave the studio and get out and be inspired by playing some shows,” he said. “We’ve done that a lot in the last few album cycles. So getting out and playing is a vital part of writing and creating.”
Watch: Metallica – The Lords of the Summer (Live Bogota, Colombia 2014) — Full Performance
Watch: Metallica – The Lords of the Summer (Live Bogota, Colombia 2014) — Full Performance 2
