Angus Cargill at Faber has acquired UK/Commonwealth rights for a six-figure sum from Matthew Hamilton at Aitken Alexander Associates for Birth School METALLICA Death, the definitive two-volume history of Metallica by Paul Brannigan and Ian Winwood, which will be a landmark release in the history of music biographies.

A press release reads as follows:

Metallica are one of the world's biggest rock bands and have sold in excess of 100 million albums. Their journey from scuzzy Los Angeles garages to the stages of the world's biggest and most storied stadia has been an epic and often traumatic one. There are countless memorable stories about the band yet to make it into print: tales of bed-hopping and drug-taking and car-crashes and fist-fights and back-stabbing that occur when you mix testosterone and adrenaline and alcohol and egomania.

No music writers have been afforded greater access to Metallica over the past two decades than Brannigan and Winwood. The duo have conducted approximately 75 hours of interviews with the band, gaining not only an unparalleled knowledge of the group's history but also an insiders' view of how this story has developed. The pair have ridden in the band's limos, flown on their private jet, joined them in the studio during the recording of seminal albums, been invited to the quartet's 'HQ' outside San Francisco and shared beers and stories with the four piece backstage in venues across the globe.

This will be a rock 'n' roll saga more perceptive, more emotionally attached, more intellectually rigorous and more readable than any which has gone before.

"We're absolutely thrilled to have got this project," says Cargill. "I was a fan of This Is A Call, Paul Brannigan's Dave Grohl biography last year, and Ian Winwood is one of the UK's finest music writers. This promises to be a fascinating study, over two volumes, of one of the indisputable heavyweight bands of the last thirty years. I was fourteen when The Black Album came out and remember how exciting a moment it was! It's also a superb addition to our music list, and something we plan to make a real event of in 2013, to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the band's debut album, Kill 'Em All."