Lars Ulrich is surprised Metallica’s new album wasn’t leaked
Lars Ulrich, drummer of legendary metal group Metallica, has said that he felt sure the band’s new album, 72 Seasons, would leak. Much to his and everyone else’s surprise, it hasn’t.
Metallica revealed the forthcoming record’s first single, ‘Lux Æterna’, alongside details of the release and news of a world tour for 2023 and 2024. The offering serves as the follow-up to 2016’s Hardwired… To Self-Destruct and is set to drop on April 14th, 2023. That same month, Metallica will hit the road for the European leg of their world tour, during which they’ll headline the 2023 Download Festival.
Ulrich was asked about the upcoming album during a recent conversation with Howard Stern. The drummer said: “We’ve been working on a new album for the last year, year-and-a-half – our COVID lockdown record. And the one thing that we’ve done all through that is for the first time in our career, we never really talked about it.”
Ulrich continued: “So, rather than, ‘Hey, there’s a new record’ and countdowns and, ‘Guess what’s coming your way?’ and all that kind of shit, we’ve been tight-fucking-lipped about it. We thought for sure this thing would leak. It hasn’t fucking leaked.”
72 Seasons looks set to bring a retrospective tinge to Metallica’s era-defining brand of thrash metal. Revealing the inspiration behind the title in a press release, frontman James Hetfield said: “72 seasons. The first 18 years of our lives that form our true or false selves. The concept that we were told ‘who we are’ by our parents. A possible pigeonholing around what kind of personality we are. I think the most interesting part of this is the continued study of those core beliefs and how it affects our perception of the world today.”
The European stretch of Metallica’s world tour will begin with a show in Amsterdam on April 27th, 2023. After stopping off for shows in Paris, Hamburg and Gothenburg, the group will head over to North America before returning to Europe for a second leg in June and July 2024.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Music Newsletter
All the latest music news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.