In what is sure to be one of the most talked-about alliances of the year, LOU REED & METALLICA's Lulu album will be released by Warner Bros. Records on November 1st in North America (October 31st elsewhere).

In a new interview with Guardian.co.uk, Lou Reed and Metallica tell Edward Helmore that teaming up to make their new album was a thrill. An excerpt from the article follows:

"The music is demanding on the listener, no question," says Hal Willner, the producer of Lulu. "I don't know what to call it but it is not background music. Lou came in with material, Metallica brought the ticket and took the ride. They showed themselves incredibly courageous, open and not pandering. They always said something if they didn't want something a certain way and they were totally free to express themselves."
"I didn't expect to be involved in a process of this magnitude," says Lars Ulrich, who is perceptibly in awe of Reed. "I'm invigorated at how absolutely awesome the record turned out. Lou walked into the studio and about seven seconds later my head was spinning like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. It was so impulsive it'll take me years to access what happened."

Two days earlier, Metallica had showed off their enduring musculature uptown at the Yankee stadium where, with the help of smoke bombs and fireworks, they showed co-headliners ANTHRAX, MEGADETH and SLAYER who remains the big dog of thrash metal. It's hard to say if Reed has much occasion to come this far uptown since he sang of heading up to Lexington and 125th, but he's in the audience, and it's easy to see why any musician, especially one as interested in – in his words – the "power of rock", would want Metallica behind them.

The way Reed tells it, theirs is a union blessed by the gods. "The moment we played together it was like: Wow! This is really serious. My guitar on top of James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett. The odds on that working – three guitars – is almost zero. It's very hard even to get that two-guitar lock. I started playing against James – it was like, whuump!" He presses his fist in his palm. "If that hadn't happened we'd still be there …"

Although Reed has inspired a multitude of guitar bands with wraparound shades, Metallica were not among them. But the differences between their respective traditions – east coast art rock, west coast metal – didn't matter, despite the fears of some fans about the project. "I'd played with them so I didn't have to go beyond that," Reed says. "I didn't need to ask for their biography. Whatever the thing is, it exists in the playing. Feeling is everything to me in rock – to make it really happening and not degenerate into pop music. That's not to put pop down." In fact, Reed has been sneaking into dance clubs where the good sound systems are and speaks admiringly of the drum sound on KANYE WEST's 'Runaway'.

Lulu was initially destined to be a covers album of a dozen or so lesser-known items from Reed's catalogue, with Metallica on board to provide backup. "I didn't know we were going to be so involved on a creative level," Ulrich says. "I was perfectly happy in a perverse way to be a backing band, because that's something we've never done."

Read more at this location.

The entire Lulu album is streaming online here.

The complete Lulu tracklisting is as follows:

'Brandenburg Gate' (4:19)

'The View' (5:17)

'Pumping Blood' (7:24)

'Mistress Dread' (6:52)

'Iced Honey' (4:36)

'Cheat On Me' (11:26)

'Frustration' (8:33)

'Little Dog' (8:01)

'Dragon' (11:08)

'Junior Dad' (19:28)

A deluxe version of Lulu will be released in a tube-shaped container (13cm x 1.24m), and will include a two-CD digipack package, a large 1.2m x 1.6m poster (with song lyrics), and three photographs by Anton Corbijn (50cm x 50.8cm).

A new trailer is available below:

Lulu was co-produced by Reed, Metallica, Hal Willner who has produced albums for Reed, MARIANNE FAITHFUL, and LAURIE ANDERSON, among others and Greg Fidelman. Fidelman also mixed the record.

The idea for these two giants of modern music to work together was born after the 25th anniversary Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame concerts in New York City in October 2009. Metallica -singer/guitarist James Hetfield, drummer Lars Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Rob Trujillo - played with Reed on VELVET UNDERGROUND classics, 'Sweet Jane' and 'White Light/White Heat'.

"We knew from then that we were made for each other," Reed says.

After that triumphant performance, Reed suggested they all make a record together. At first they planned to record an album of Reed's older material, what Ulrich describes as "some of Lou's lost jewels - songs that he felt he'd like to give a second spin, and we could do whatever it is we do to some of those songs." That idea "hung in the air for a couple of months." Then, a week or two before that session was to begin, "Lou called up and said, 'Listen, I have this other idea.'"

That idea was to record a series of songs Reed had written for American avant-garde theater director Robert Wilson and German theater group the Berliner Ensemble's production of the Lulu Plays, which premiered in Aprilat theTheatre am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin, founded by Bertolt Brecht. The songs are inspired by German expressionist Frank Wedekind's early 20th century plays Earth Spirit and Pandora's Box, and were a rewrite of Edgar Allan Poe's, The Raven, which emerged as a graphic novel on Fantagraphics Press.