According to Bild, Germany's top-selling daily newspaper, METALLICA's new album could arrive on October 14. This release date, however, has not been confirmed by Universal, the conglomerate that currently distributes the band's music overseas.

METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich recently spoke to Citizens Of Humanity magazine about the musical direction of the group's long-awaited follow-up to 2008's "Death Magnetic". He said: "It definitely sounds like METALLICA. It's probably a little less frenetic than the last record. The last one [producer] Rick Rubin really encouraged us to for the first time be inspired by our past. It was the first time we sort of looked in the rearview mirror. This time around it's a little bit of a different thing."

Ulrich continued: "We're not working with Rick, we're working with the engineer from the last record, who's producing, Greg Fidelman. So there's some of the same production elements at play, but we're expanding a little bit on the sonics. It's probably a bit more of a diverse record than the last one. It's exciting, but I don't have quite the perspective yet."

Ulrich also addressed the eight-year gap between studio albums, the longest of the band's career, by saying: "I think what's happened is our families and our domestic responsibilities are so important to us now, so we just have a new model. We're sort of constantly doing something but never to the point of the needle going in the red, but METALLICA really hasn't sort of shut down since around 2005, and it's a model that works for us."

He added: "We never work at 110 percent to the point where we drive ourselves nuts, but are sort of constantly working at two-thirds, you know — when we make the record we're writing and we're recording, but we're doing it incrementally. There's always stuff going on. It's the way we like it. It keeps us engaged."

Ulrich told The Pulse Of Radio not long ago that METALLICA no longer wants to devote large chunks of time to any one project. "You know, METALLICA, in order for it to be true and pure and honest, has to be fun," he said. "And so the days of, you know, writing for a year and then recording for a year and then going on the road for three years — those kind of endlessly long cycles — they're just behind us. I don't think we have the stamina to do anything for those elongated periods of time any longer."

METALLICA worked on the new disc on and off over the past few years, in between other projects that included a series of short tours, a film, the restoration of some of their early albums and other projects.

The band recently completed recording at its headquarters in San Rafael, California and has now begun mixing the new disc.