Metallica To Start Recording New Album With Rick Rubin In 2011

Metallica recently announced that their collaboration album with music icon Lou Reed was finished. Now according to super-producer Rick Rubin; the band is about to get underway on a full-on Metallica record at some point in the very near future.

Speaking to Billboard.com, Rick Rubin shared that he would be returning to produce Metallica's new album. Rubin first worked with the band on their self proclaimed return to their thrash metal roots: 2008's 'Death Magnetic'. According to Rubin, the process is in the very early stages of pre-production:

“I had a meeting with Lars [Ulrich] in San Francisco...to explore what the focus was going to be this time around. I’m still sort of thinking about what that is going to be. I’ll ask a lot of questions and we’ll probably listen to some of the riffs that they’ve been writing. Usually I’ll hear something that will sort of indicate the direction and then we’ll talk about it from there.”

Rubin may be listening to new riffs for quite some time; Lars recently said that James Hetfield had hundreds of incredible riffs stockpiled and comes up with multiple new ideas every time he plays. It's probably still too early to get excited for new music from the band, they are known for working incredibly slow. Metallica spent over a year (from inception to release) working on both of their last full length releases; 'St. Anger' and 'Death Magnetic'. Most likely we will see the band's album with Lou Reed earlier now as they will not want to release two album on top of one another. Our guess is that project will see release in the next 3 to 6 months.