Metallica is set to begin production rehearsals for their latest tour on Monday in San Francisco, the tour kicks off on October 21st in Arizona. According to drummer Lars Ulrich the band will play “a lot of new songs” from “Death Magnetic” on this tour.

The band has not toured the US for quite some time. When they’ve toured on new albums in the past they’ve been pretty conservative when playing new songs. Ulrich explains…

“These new songs are a lot of fun to play,” Ulrich tells Billboard.com. “Traditionally I think we’ve been a little conservative when we’ve started off with two songs, three songs (from the new album). We’re going to hit the ground running here. We’re probably gonna learn all of them and play, I hope, at least five a night and probably rotate ‘em so we get a lot of new songs in. That’s one thing I’m definite about.”

One of the reasons the band is so keen to play the new material is because its been heralded by fans and critics as a return to form. “Death Magnetic” has already sold almost 3 million copies worldwide and over 1 million in the US alone.

“It’s just an overwhelming, positive thing,”. “You couldn’t have told me a month ago or six months ago that we would have a record that would be this well-received. It seems like it’s so universal this time and it’s all over the world and everybody’s so into it on so many different levels — the fans, press, the peers … everybody.”

The band’s stage setup will be “in the round” once again but different from previous tours, involving a huge, moving lighting rig above the band.

I remember seeing footage of the band during the Black Album era and I believe they’ve been playing “in the round” since then. I recently checked out even older Metallica videos on YouTube and was surprised to see Kirk Hammett playing a lot of Ibanez guitars. Regardless of what guitars they’re playing this time around, its the first time I’ve personally wanted to see a Metallica concert in a long while because I think some of the new material is great.

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In an exclusive interview for “Get Thrashed: The Story of Thrash” a documentary about the 90’s thrash metal movement, Kirk Hammett discusses Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.

Spin Magazine has the exclusive clip, that is not featured in the documentary available for viewing on their website.

In the brief clip, Hammett mentions that Kurt Cobain was a Metallica fan and loved their “Ride The Lightning” album and the track “Whiplash” from Metallica’s first album “Kill Em’ All.”

In other Metallica news, the band remains No.1 for the 2nd week in a row on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart, having sold 867,000 records in a week and a half.

Metallica just played two of England’s biggest rock festivals, Reading and Leeds. A live soundboard version of their new single “The Day That Never Comes” from Leeds is available online via YouTube. The band’s “MetClub” series lets fans download soundboard versions of live shows for a fee, this one apparently leaked to youtube.

The sound of the song is a little muddier than the studio version, but overall it’s decent. From what I’ve seen it appears James Hetfield has been playing a lot of Gibson Explorers and also Les Pauls recently. I personally like the way these sound a lot more than the ESP’s he plays a lot. The structure of the song is kind of dangerously close to the band’s classic track “One” but its probably better than most of the tracks currently on Modern Rock radio.

Metallica has set September 12th, a Friday, as the release date for their new album “Death Magnetic”. This is unusual as traditional release days are Monday/Tuesday for albums.

The band’s last album “St. Anger” also saw a Friday release, reasons cited for this are that it prevents leaks. How true that is, im not so sure.

The band  has also filmed a video for the first single from their new record, entitled “The Day That Never Comes” with director Thomas Vinterberg.

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Above is the cover art for Metallica’s new album “Death Magnetic” due out in September. James Hetfield recently revealed more info about the album’s title to VG TV…

“‘Death Magnetic’, at least the title, to me, it’s… It had something to do with… It started out as kind of a tribute to people that have fallen in our business, like Layne Staley and a lot of the people that have died, basically — rock and roll martyrs of sorts. And then it kind of grew from there. Thinking about death… some people are drawn towards it, and just like a magnet, some people are drawn towards it, [and] other people are afraid of it and push away. And the concept that we’re all gonna die sometimes is over-talked about and then a lot of times never talked about — no one wants to bring it up; it’s the big white elephant in the living room. But we all have to deal with it at some point. So that’s kind of the subject matter.”

He sounds a little confused about it himself. Once again, nothing from this album has been heard yet besides snippets teased on the bands official website. The album is supposed to be a return to older form for the band, supposedly featuring furious guitar solo’s by Kirk Hammett. This would make sense as the band has brought back their classic logo.

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Metallica haven’t even revealed the artwork for their forthcoming album “Death Magnetic” but they have already announced a deluxe coffin-style package. What? You ask, well here’s the info…

“In addition to the album, the package will include a disc of demos, a behind-the-scenes DVD chronicling the making of “Death Magnetic,” a T-shirt, a flag, guitar picks and a poster.

Also featured is a Metallica credit card with a code redeemable for a download of a “special European show happening in September.” This edition is only available from the band’s Web site.”

This is a cool idea on the bands part, if not a little extraneous. Although it makes a lot of sense, as I’m sure a lot of you out there, are still sticking with Metallica and would like to get extra stuff from the band. It is also worth noting that the band is including guitar picks in the package, as I’m sure they know a lot of their fans are guitar players themselves.

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Over the weekend Metallica revealed, (via their website), their new album’s title: “Death Magnetic.” I’ll be honest, it sounds pretty cheesy. I don’t know how permanent the title is, but one would assume it is the final title as the album’s release is not too far away in September. Let’s hope the music is the return to the early albums, they’ve been promising.

Metallica also played a well-received headlining set at the Bonnaroo Music Festival this weekend. After the band was introduced by comedian Chris Rock, they proceeded to play the following songs…

01 “Creeping Death”
02 “For Whom The Bell Tolls”
03 “Ride The Lightning”
04 “Harvester Of Sorrow”
05 “The Unforgiven”
06 “…And Justice For All”
07 “No Remorse”
08 “The Memory Remains”
09 “Fade To Black”
10 “Master Of Puppets”
11 “Whiplash”
12 “Nothing Else Matters”
13 “Sad But True”
14 “One”
15 “Enter Sandman”
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16 “Last Caress”
17 “So What”
18 “Seek and Destroy”

Cool to see a lot of earlier material in there, no new songs played whatsoever though. A lot of guitarists will be excited as Kirk Hammett is doing early-Metallica-style solo’s on this new record (so says Kerrang! and Metal Hammer).

Find more information, photo’s and anecdotes over at Stereogum, who have excellent Bonnaroo coverage…

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There’s been an onslaught of Metallica news recently, mainly because the band are playing live for the first time in 5 years and are gearing up to release a new album in September of this year. So it’s no surprise that the release of this has been timed accordingly…

“Randall Amplifiers has announced the KH-15 Kirk Hammett Signature Practice Amplifier, a full-featured practice amp created through a year-long collaboration between Hammett and Randall engineers. With a fierce, solid tone and details that include control labels written in Kirk’s own handwriting, the Randall Kirk Hammett Signature Practice Amplifier is the perfect choice for musicians jamming on-the-go and recording in the studio.”

This is a little strange, seeing as though Kirk Hammett is usually associated with a monster sound. However, if this is the amp he actually uses backstage, etc…I could see a lot of Metallica and Hammett fans really wanting this. As far as practice amps go it looks like it has a ton of features…

“The Randall Kirk Hammett Signature Practice Amp features two channels — clean and a custom Kirk Hammett Signature Overdrive with boost for extra gain. Additional facilities include a 3-band equalizer, spring reverb, headphone out for silent jamming and a CD/tape input for playing along with a favorite tune or rehearsing.”

More info can be found here.