Metallica have had quite the busy year for a supposed "off" year. They got into the board game business. They launched their own music festival, got into the board game business and are in the midst of producing a Metallica 3D movie. But it looks like things are winding down, especially after headlining San Francisco's Outside Lands festival in Golden Gate Park next month. That means they may start focusing, again, on writing a new album. In fact, during a conference call, Lars said exactly that:
"Every time James Hetfield picks up a guitar, there are some brilliant riffs that come out of it, and I try to make sure that they are all recorded and try to do my best to keep up with them and try to put some drums in behind them," says Ulrich. "So there are, obviously, tons of ideas sitting around waiting to be had at in terms of turning ideas of James’ into songs. Pretty much when we’re done with the [3D] movie [project] and with Outside Lands, which should all be wrapped up by early September, we’re gonna basically just concentrate on new music and try to get another Metallica record [done]."
While the band might hunker down and get to work on new material, don't expect new material until 2013 the earliest.
Another tidbit to come out of the call, was Lars all-but-confirming a second annual ORION festival to take place in New Jersey or somewhere on the East Coast (but probably not Atlantic City) in 2013. MetalSucks tracked down attendance figures for this year's fest, coming in at 24,000 tickets sold, which, according to our sources close to the band, was enough to make this a profitable outing, although probably not as profitable as could have been. Either way, we had a great time at the show and it mostly seemed like everybody else we knew did as well so we look forward to the repeat.
