Drummer Lars Ulrich on New Metallica Album: "We're Going to Be Recording Very Soon"

With a 3D film and a music festival in the works, it's hard to believe Metallica will be able to find time to write and record a new album. That said, that's exactly what they're doing.

In a new interview with Spin, drummer Lars Ulrich revealed that the band were indeed working on a new album, and would be hitting the studio sooner rather than later.

"We're writing music and we're going to be recording very soon," said Ulrich. "At some point we're going to want to share that with people that are interested in listening to it. So we gotta figure out ways we want to do that, from giving it away in cereal boxes to getting people to do handstands for it. We could come up with something wacky."

He continued: "We're still throwing ideas around. We work in stages. Some people will write a song from beginning to end in one go. We don't do that. We'll develop, like, 10 ideas and do a couple cycles. We'll do a verse, chorus and maybe an intro, and then we'll leave them and go develop 10 other ideas. So it's a little early yet because we haven't gone back yet and started tweaking anything. Right now we're throwing ideas at the canvas and picking out great riffs."

You can read the full interview here.

Writing for the follow-up to 2008's Death Magnetic, which will be produced by Rick Rubin, has been going on since at least last fall. In an October interview, bassist Robert Trujillo revealed that the band had at least two song ideas in the works, with more to come.

"We've got a couple of new songs we have been working on the past couple of weeks," he told GulfNews.com. "The writing process for the new Metallica album has begun. We've been in the studio with Rick Rubin, working on a couple of things, and we're going to be recording during the most of next year. We've got a lot of work ahead of us. But the great thing is that we have sort of already jumped off the launch pad and we're swimming. It's happening. It's reality. It's a lot of fun, there are a lot of ideas, and we're really excited about the new record. For me, personally, Death Magnetic was the launch pad for the next record. This is the beginning of something very, very cool."