On September 19th, METALLICA chatted with IRON MAIDEN's Bruce Dickinson on his Friday Rock Show - click here to listen.

Drummer Lars Ulrich spoke to BW&BK; recently about the creation of their new album, Death Magnetic.

Comments Lars, “I think where you’re in Metallica, you’re never too far from - and you come back to the core of - what Metallica is. Rick (Rubin) said be inspired by… I mean, literally, one of the marching orders was: ‘I want you guys to make CDs of the music you listened to in 1985. And listen to that in your car.’ So we were never very far away from your MERCYFUL FATE records, the DIAMOND HEAD records, Iron Maiden, MOTÖRHEAD, SAXON, SWEET SAVAGE, all that stuff. It has the same relevance when Metallica does these kinds of endeavors that it did in 1985 or 1981 when we started. I mean Mercyful Fate stuff is just timeless. I think one could even argue that it has more relevance now than it did ten years ago because of the healthy state of metal now on a worldwide basis. So listening to ‘Evil’ or ‘Curse Of The Pharaohs’ or ‘Am I Evil?’ or a Sweet Savage song or ‘Motorcycle Man’ or whatever - it’s sort of the same relevance to me. Before we started making the record, in the year off, in the ‘05 year, before we hooked up with Rick, I listened a lot to some of my favourite new metal bands, you know, SLIPKNOT, SYSTEM, MACHINE HEAD, that type of stuff. But once Rick came on board I started going back to more of the classic stuff because, like I say, the marching orders were to go back and listen to the stuff we listened to in the ‘80s.”

Watch for more of BW&BK;'s chat with Metallica at BraveWords.com and in the upcoming issue - #113, out in November!