More Details of Metallica and Lou Reed Album Emerge

More details regarding the highly-anticipated new album from Metallica and Lou Reed have surfaced on the project's official website.

The album is indeed slated for a November 1 release date, which it turns out will be handled by Metallica's long-time record label Warner Brothers.

While the two artists involved may strike many as odd, Lou Reed feels it's anything but. "Why is this surprising?" asks Reed. "An odd collaboration would be Metallica and Cher. That would be odd. Us - that's an obvious collaboration."

The website also goes into further detail about the inspiration behind the songs, calling the album "a set of extended songs inspired by German expressionist Frank Wedekind's early 20th century plays Earth Spirit and Pandora's Box (much admired by Freud). The plays, originally published in 1904 and set in Germany, Paris and London in the 1890s, whirl between the points of view of Lulu, an inverted-Eve-like cipher-mirror of desire and abuse, and the people who fall desperately in love with her. Then she meets Jack The Ripper..."

What did James Hetfield think when Reed brought in the idea and the songs? "We thought: what can we do, what we can add to the potency of this, to take it to another level, make it heavy, make it rock?," mused the Metallica frontman.

"We were very interested in working with Lou," continued Hetfield. "I had these giant question marks: what's it going to be like? What's going to happen? So it was great when he sent us the lyrics for the Lulu body of work. It was something we could sink our teeth into. I could take off my singer and lyricist hat and concentrate on the music part. These were very potent lyrics, with a soundscape behind them for atmosphere. Lars and I sat there with an acoustic and let this blank canvas take us where it needed to go. It was a great gift, to be asked to stamp 'TALLICA on it. And that's what we did."

You can read more about the project here.