METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich spoke to Metal Forces about the progress of the recording sessions for the band's follow-up to 2008's "Death Magnetic" album. He said: "We're now coming towards the end of the musical creative process and we're starting to look ahead and the process of how we're gonna share this record with the universe."

He added: "The month of June is basically when we're gonna sit down and figure what we're gonna do with it all; what we're gonna call it and what's gonna be on it."

The new METALLICA album is being recorded at the band's headquarters in San Rafael, California with producer Greg Fidelman, who engineered and mixed "Death Magnetic".

"Greg Fidelman is 24/7 on this record and has been since last summer," said Ulrich. "He's doing an insanely great job and has been putting his heart and soul in it pretty much every waking moment of his life in helping us engineer and produce this record."

Although Ulrich was hopeful that METALLICA's new album would arrive in 2016, he was careful not to make any promises. "If the record doesn't come out this year, then it won't be because it's not done," he stated. "It will be because there's some sort of cosmic reason that it would be smarter to hold onto it until next year. But the record will be done this summer."

METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett told Alternative Press that the "hardest part" of recording a new album was coordinating the band members' schedules, saying, "Life has its demands. We're trying to make an album and go on tour, trying to be a band, but we all recognize that if someone has a family situation, that takes priority over everything."

The group's headlining show at Minneapolis' new U.S. Bank Stadium on August 20 sold out all 66,000 tickets in less than ten minutes two months ago. Joining METALLICA at that show will be AVENGED SEVENFOLD and VOLBEAT.

METALLICA's classic 1986 album "Master Of Puppets" is among the records that have been selected for induction into the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry. Every year 25 recordings that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and at least ten years old are selected.