Last night, Metallica unveiled their first new song in half a decade during their first show of 2014 in Bogotá Colombia. The new track titled "The Lords of Summer" is the first piece of new music since 2012's Beyond Magnetic EP (the outtakes from 2008's Death Magnetic).
About the eight-minute track, Lars Ulrich told Rolling Stone that it could be subject to change as time goes on.
"We did the same thing when we went out and played a bunch of dates in 2006," he told them. "We were writing and played two different new songs over the course of that summer, and none of them made the record [Death Magnetic]. One was called 'New Song 1' — going out on a creative limb, here — and the other was called 'New Song 2.' That's how deep we went. There was a couple of pieces in 'New Song 1,' some of the middle bit ended up in 'All Nightmare Long,' and the intro bit ended up in 'The End of the Line.' That's how we work; stuff just gets changed around, moved over and this goes over there and the rest of that gets sacked and that ends up in the intro in song five.
"So who knows what's going to happen with this stuff. But we are off and running and have been creating away in the studio and now we're going to go out and play and sweat and share and we've got some new music that we want to throw everybody's way. And maybe by the time we get to Europe, there will be a different song or different thing or different arrangement. Who knows? We'll sort of take it one step at a time."
The band is currently touring on a leg they have dubbed "Metallica by Request Tour," which takes them to South America, Europe and Canada and allows fans to choose 17 songs from a pool of 140.
Check out footage of "The Lords of Summer" here, and let us know what you think in the comments section below!
