METALLICA's ULRICH: 'We're Actually Not Recording Right Now'

A 20-minute video of METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich babbling away (with minimal input from METALLICA bassist Robert Trujillo) on May 25, 2006 at the band's rehearsal studio/headquarters in San Rafael, California has been posted online at Elektra.com. The clip, which was made available exclusively to the band's official fan club, features Ulrich discussing the current happenings in METALLICA land, including the songwriting sessions for the follow-up to 2003's "St. Anger" and the band's upcoming "Escape from the Studio '06" tour, which is scheduled to kick off June 3 in Nürburgring, Germany at the Rock Am Ring Festival.

On the topic of why there have been minimal updates from the studio at the band's official web site, Ulrich said, "We're actually not recording right now. I know everybody… Nowadays, it's like, if you're in the studio, everybody presumes you're recording or making a record, which, of course, we technically are. But the difference between this time and last time is that last time there was no real separation between the writing process and the recording process; it was one thing, and that was the whole kind of 'St. Anger' experiment — to do away with the separate processes of that, and nobody brought in any pre-recorded stuff or ideas; it was just make it up on the spot, be in the moment, put the fucking thing out and next time remember to put the snare on, all that stuff — we've covered that. So this time we are doing exactly what we did on all the other albums — first we're writing, then we're recording. The only difference is — and this is kind of where it gets a little gray area, next-level shit — is that we're writing where we record. So we're writing here at HQ because this is our home, our pad, our hood, our thing. On all the earlier albums… we wrote the 'black' album at my house and recorded it in L.A., we wrote the 'Justice' album at my house and recorded it in L.A., we wrote the 'Puppets' album at James' [Hetfield] house and recorded it in Denmark., blah blah blah. But now we're writing in the studio. . . We show up here five days a week, we get together, we listen to some riff tape from Madrid or Glasgow or Peoria, Illinois, and we sit down and go, 'That riff' and 'That riff,' and then we spend the next six hours trying to remember how to write songs, and then we go pick our kids up and then we come back the next morning and do it all over again."

Added Trujillo: "I think that the intensity is sort of narrowed down into so many hours, and then there are other responsibilities, too. But that doesn't mean that the end result is not gonna be kicking everyone in their ass. Sock 'em in their face. It's gonna be awesome. But we're also preparing for stuff that we've got coming up here soon. So there are performance issues, too, that we have to work towards."

Watch the entire 20-minute video clip at Elektra.com: 300k, 100k, 56k.