Bloggers and fans were talking yesterday when Metallica posted a clock on a website called Metallica XX. The clock is counting down to an announcement on Thursday, October 10 at noon.
People digging around in the code of Metallica XX noticed ties to promoter Danny Wimmer Presents, who puts on festivals like Louder Than Life, Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival, Aftershock. Now The PRP points out all those websites have been "hacked" and will have an announcement posted on – ready? – Thursday, October 10 at noon.
My initial guess for the clock's countdown result was the announcement of S&M² coming out on CD/DVD. The website is called Metallica XX, S&M was released in 1999 and S&M² is presumably coming out in 2019. So there's my reasoning for the 20. It also helps that S&M² is hitting theaters on October 9 and an announcement like that the day after makes sense. Plus, and I hate to bring this up, but James Hetfield is in rehab and who knows how long his recovery is going to take. Now there's a very reasonable alternate guess as to what the clock is for.
Stay tuned, but it looks like Metallica is planning for 2020 to be a pretty big year (hopefully).