Metallica have been confirmed as headliners at this year’s Reading and Leeds festivals between Friday August 22 and Sunday August 24.

Joining Metallica are Rage Against The Machine - who make their first UK appearance in the UK for eight years - Slipknot, Queens Of The Stone Age, Serj Tankian, Feeder and Pendulum. In addition to their Download 2008 appearances, Bullet For My Valentine and Biffy Clyro have confirmed they’ll appear at the three-day festival. More acts will be announced over the coming months.

“Alongside the hallowed turf of Castle Donington there is no place in the UK that is more historic or more of an honour for Metallica to play than at Reading,” drummer Lars Ulrich tells Kerrang!. “Back in the day when I was first tripping on music, I’d look at the line-up and see bands like Iron Maiden, UFO and Whitesnake headlining, so for us to be asked to come back yet again and stand at the top of the pile so to speak is an absolutely tremendous gift from the organisers. It’s just such an absolutely incredible thing to be a part of.

“I remember playing the festival back in ‘03 and getting the chance to close down Reading, and that was such a massive feeling to carry around,” he adds. “The fact that they’ve asked us to come back and do the same thing again is absolutely huge in my eyes. We headlined Wembley last year, did Download the year before, and so playing Reading and Leeds just seemed like the obvious thing to do. In my eyes it’s still one of the biggest and most monumental music festivals in the world, and with bands like Slipknot and Rage Against The Machine playing I’m sure it’s going to be one of the best line-ups that people have seen in quite a while.”

Ulrich says fans can expect to hear some new material from their forthcoming ninth studio album.

“We’re psyched to play some new songs,” he laughs. “In fact, if we don’t, then I give people permission to come and find me and slap me across the face! We’re certainly planning on rolling out some of the new songs for the first time, but right now our focus is on finishing the record. As soon as that’s out of the way, we’ll be hitting the rehearsal room and getting to grips with playing these bastards live!”

Slipknot are currently working on their first studio release since 2004’s Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses).

“Last time we played we were part of history, this time we’re gonna make history,” says vocalist Corey Taylor. “Get ready to believe again.”

Tickets are on sale now. To purchase tickets online, please visit www.aloud.com or call 0870 998 8888. (more…)

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Okay . . . we know that it has been a while since we’ve had a full-on Metalli-experience Stateside, but that’s about to change. We are psyched to share with you that we have been invited to headline the Bonnaroo Music Festival . . . so Manchester, Tennessee here we come on June 13, 2008!

For the uninitiated, Bonnaroo is a four day, multi-stage old school European style festival held on a 700 acre farm about an hour’s drive from Nashville. There will be 13 stages on a 100 acre entertainment village including around the clock attractions and activities . . . comedy, jazz, cinema, workshops, food, crafts . . . never a dull moment! The first go around was in 2002 and since then headliners have included Radiohead, The Police, Tool, The White Stripes, Tom Petty, and Dave Matthews. This year we’ll be joining Pearl Jam, Jack Johnson, Kanye West, Alison Krauss and Robert Plant and others. How cool is it to be thrown into that company??

The Bonnaroo gang does an amazing job at giving you everything you could want/need for a great weekend . . . so hang out, soak up the vibe, and embrace the whole experience . . . actually you have no choice, single day tickets are not available!!! Visit their site at www.bonnaroo.com for more details on travel packages, info on camping, which is what most chose to do, where to stay if you’re not into that, and a slew of other useful info.

Tickets go on sale on Saturday, February 16, 2008 at noon EST (that’s 9 AM for us West Coast types) and you can only get them through the Bonnaroo site.

The first tickets will be priced at a special rate of $209.50 each. There is a limited allotment of tickets at this price. When the first allotment is sold out, ticket prices will increase without notice to $229.50 and then again without notice to $244.50. All tickets are 4-day weekend passes, which include camping and parking.

Lars interview about Metallica playing Bonnaroo is below:

(more…)

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Metallica has been confirmed to play Rock Am Ring and Rock in Park festivals in Germany on 7th and 8th of June 2008. Buy tickets here!

The song “The Ecstasy Of Gold” is nominated in the Best Rock Instrumental Performance (For solo, duo, group or collaborative performances, without vocals. Includes Rock, Hard Rock and Metal. Singles or Tracks only.) Other nominees are Rush, Joe Satriani, Bruce Springsteen, and Steve Vai.

The 50th Annual Grammy Awards will be held on Sunday, Feburary 10th 2008 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Check out new issue of Guitar World, which included exclusive sneak preview of the new album.

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Kirk Hammett has lowered the asking price for his 1899 Georgian Mansion to $10.5 million (£5million) from the original $12.5 million.

The palace boasts 9,519 square feet, nine bedrooms, seven full baths, three half baths, a library, and a billiard room, and includes “a deep grassy garden and detached 2-car side-by-side garage.”

See the full details of the mansion here!

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MTV and Harmonix have plans to release new music weekly for the game, eventually pushing the game’s library into the thousands. And DeGooyer says that musicians, both established and up-and-coming, are lining up to get their music into the game. Some artists may even forgo the traditional route of MTV or radio and premiere new songs directly on Rock Band.

“There are a couple of things we’ve committed to, one of them with Metallica for example,” he said. “They’ve reserved the right to give us their first single from their new album for the game.”

In other cases, musicians might release music to the game to tie in with a new record or tour, he said.

Order Rock Band at Amazon today!

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NME writer Dele Fadele delves into his rock’n’roll diary to recall a war story of old. Here he elaborates on his 1987 encounter with “divas” Metallica…

“March 1987: I get to interview Metallica’s James Hetfield backstage in a giant astrodome on the outskirts of Paris. We talk about the hardcore punk/metal crossover of the time and Metallica as posterboys for a new, reformed kind of metal. He’s not having any of it.

“He says, at one point, casually, that he likes pissing in womens’ drinks in nightclubs. I say I’m gonna print his quote verbatim. As if he could care less. His quote is meant to antagonise the NME of the time, which slags off metal bands with impunity, for boorish, sexist behaviour, and uncontrolled excesses, amongst other things.

“James Hetfield is here to defend his way of life – hunting wild animals, eating red meat, an extremist Christian upbringing and background; loud, unreconstructed metal. All of which are anathema to NME. So, we’re thrown into a state of psychological warfare.

“A few hours previously, and I jump at the chance to fly to Paris and interview the band with great gusto. I figure a metal band that’s aware of Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, and the general American hardcore scene, will be right up my alley.

“But things go wrong from the moment we arrive at the venue. Metallica leave me stuck in a small room backstage, watching an insect slowly crawl up the wall for four hours.

“The photographer only gets three minutes photo time for what turns out to be a cover-shoot – luckily, she also gets to photograph Metallica live, or there wouldn’t be an image for what turns out to be their first NME cover article. (more…)

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Metallica’s drummer Lars Ulrich has released a statement to Blabbermouth.net regarding the passing of influential heavy metal journalist Bob Muldowney, who died Monday, November 5 after a long battle with cardiomyopathy (heart muscle disease). Bob was 44 years old.

“Bob was one of the early believers in the cause, the metal cause that we all championed and that we all were inspired by. Later, we were fortunate enough that Bob also became a believer in the ‘TALLICA cause and we in return were inspired by his belief in us and his championing our cause. Bob will be missed…”

Muldowney was best known for his fanzine/magazine Kick*Ass which helped expose, support and feature such bands as RAVEN, MOTÖRHEAD, VENOM, THE RODS, TANK, EXCITER and RIOT as well as burgeoning underground thrash scene, giving, in some instances, the first coverage to SLAYER, MEGADETH, MEDIEVAL, OVERKILL, and ANTHRAX. It was Bob’s love of true, honest metal, which drove him to deliver a demo tape of a then-unknown California band called METALLICA into the hands of then-Rock ‘n’ Roll Heaven store owner (and future Megaforce Records head honcho) Jonny Z — who was advertising with Kick*Ass at the time.

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Couple of changes for the second night show. New Blue Oyster Cult cover and The Unforgiven instead of Turn The Page. Here is the full setlist:

I Just Want To Celebrate (Rare Earth)
Please Don’t Judas Me (Nazareth)
Veteran Of Psychic Wars (Blue Oyster Cult)
Brothers In Arms (Dire Straits)
Disposable Heroes
All Within My Hands
The Unforgiven
Nothing Else Matters

And here is the video clip of the new cover:

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Very unexpected setlist from Metallica last night. 4 new cover songs, 1 never played live original, 1 heavy favorite and 2 acoustic ballads. This is the complete setlist:

I Just Want To Celebrate (Rare Earth)
Please Don’t Judas Me (Nazareth)
Only Happy When It Rains (Garbage)
Brothers In Arms (Dire Straits)
Disposable Heroes
All Within My Hands
Turn The Page
Nothing Else Matters

Here are the highlights of the night:

Only Happy When It Rains:

Brothers In Arms:

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Robb Flynn of Machine Head updated his diary with these words on Metallica and Lars especially:

Metallica at Wembley Stadium. Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude! DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE!?!?!? Such an honor. Handpicked. Last minute. To be honest, we thought it might be a bit rough just because we were thrown on so late in the game, our fans might not know about it in time, etc. But oh my god dude. Let me preface this and start by saying that, straight up, the first 3 songs were literally the sloppiest we’d played on the entire Blackening run. Jesus?! Guitar cutting out, broken strings, tech hands me my guitar wildly out of tune, Phil’s wireless goes out… it was like, NOW?! Were gonna have all these problems NOW??!! Christ al-fuckin’-mighty! But you know what…it didn’t matter, the crowd went friggin’ APESHIT! The circle pit for Imperium (which Monte Conner says is the new Davidian) was… just… oh my fuckin’ GOD! We FINALLY pulled it together for Halo and Davidian, and from Halo on…the world just fell into place…everything got easy. Didn’t know it at the time but Hetfield watched us… from Halo on… whew! Check out that Imperium pit here.

Mastodon ruled, as always. But Metallica, man, Metallica… dude… untouchable that night. I’ve seen a couple bad shows from them recently, but man, they walked on fucking water that night. What a vibe. Setlist: Impeccable. Between-song banter: Hysterical. The crowd sing-a-long to the “la-da-da-da” part, from the lone post-Black-album song they played (Memory Remains)… it went on for 2 minutes after the song ended… goose bumps man… fucking… goose bumps. Hetfield hung in the dressing room, told us he’s rockin’ to The Blackening, “there’s some epic shit on there”… my brain pretty much imploded at that point… smoke out of the ears and everything… full-on frizzle fry.

The afterparty was drunken insanity, I gave and received no less than 17 skull bites to Brent from Mastodon, but the highlight of it all, was hanging out with Lars after the afterparty, drinking a small ocean’s worth of booze and picking his brain about every detail of the thrash era that I thought I knew about or wanted to know about. With Adam, and a small pow-wow of people, him and I held court for nearly an hour talking about everything from the years he followed Diamond Head around (he was in the rehearsal studio with them when they wrote Am I Evil), following Motorhead around, Dave Mustaine, Napster, Exodus, Baloff, Cliff, what their mindset was when writing MOP, who were their rivals at the time, the first time I saw them, what they thought of Slayer back then… dudes, I was in full-on Metallica history nerd/geek mode, and it RULED ’cause he was spilling all the dirt. We raged on over to some fancy-schmancy hotel his friends were at, where, in between skull bites, WWE wrestling sessions and all of us flashing all of our penises at cars passing by, we talked the pros and cons of cocaine, while he fawned hopelessly over our publicity girl… it was c-r-a-z-y!

What a night!!!!!!!

Stumbled back to the hotel at 6AM, was on a plane by 11AM, and 12 hours later, I was changing diapers with my 2 kids who couldn’t really give 2 shits about what I just did. I wasn’t Robb Flynn of Machine Head anymore, I was just Dada, and Dada needed to “change my poopy pants”, and “take out the garbage”, and “go to the store ’cause we’re out of formula”… and so on, and so on, and so on.

Life has a way checking you. Yesterday I was supporting Metallica, today I’m changing a record 5 (five!) poopy diapers in 1 day.

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