LARS ULRICH Says 'The Lords Of Summer' Is 'Fairly Representative' Of METALLICA's Current Creative Headspace

METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich spoke to RollingStone.com about the band's new song "The Lords Of Summer", which was performed for the first time last night (Sunday, March 16) at the opening show of the band's South American tour in Bogota, Colombia.

"We promised our fans we'd play a new song and we've been writing and creating away and we're going to throw something at them on Sunday," Ulrich said in the interview, which wasconducted last week. "We have something lined up that is fairly representative of where our creative headspace is at right now. It's one of those things that's like, 'Here, we're writing and we're creating.'"

"We did the same thing when we went out and played a bunch of dates in 2006," he continued. "We were writing and played two different new songs over the course of that summer, and none of them made the record [2008's 'Death Magnetic']. One was called 'New Song 1' — going out on a creative limb, here — and the other was called 'New Song 2'. That's how deep we went. There was a couple of pieces in 'New Song 1', some of the middle bit ended up in 'All Nightmare Long', and the intro bit ended up in 'The End Of The Line'. That's how we work; 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. [Laughs]"

He added: "So who knows what's going to happen with this stuff. 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. And maybe by the time we get to Europe, there will be a different song or different thing or different arrangement. Who knows? We'll sort of take it one step at a time."

Ulrich told The Pulse Of Radio not long ago that spending all its time making an album is no longer a priority for METALLICA. "If we had to sit there and, 'Okay, boys, now you write for the rest of the year and then you spend the next year after that recording' — I would pull what seven hairs I have left, I'd pull those out and rather just stab myself in the eye with nails or whatever," he said. "I just, I couldn't do it. I mean, we love the position that we're in to be able to come and go between all these different projects. That's what keeps us alive."

In a 2013 interview with Kerrang!, Ulrich spoke about the band's mindset going into the songwriting phase for its next album. He explained: "The only thing I can tell you is that there seems to be a consensus in the band that 'Death Magnetic' was a really good record that we're proud of, that had good legs on it — meaning that it still sounds really rocking five years later. And I can tell you that with most of the previous METALLICA records, I found any faults, I had any issues with them way, way sooner than five years. So the stuff that we've been jamming on is certainly not a million miles removed from where we left off from 'Death Magnetic'. But two years from now, when I sit and talk to you about the new record, it'll probably be a different story from the six-year-old looking for the ice cream shop."

Aside from touring, METALLICA has spent much of the five-plus years since the release of its last effort, "Death Magnetic", on several other projects, including launching a music festival, collaborating on an album with the late Lou Reed and making a feature film.