As Metallica gear up to record their 10th studio album, drummer Lars Ulrich reveals that the band is trying to find “wacky” new strategies for getting the music to the fans who want it.

Metallica are one of a handful of bands that have become so successful over the years that they now get to call their shots. As Ulrich tells Spin, the band’s artistic freedom has only been furthered by their recent “free agent” status. “We’re free and clear of our record contract. The world’s our oyster,” he says. “We can basically do whatever we want — and we’re going to start figuring that out.”

With the days of simply recording an album, pressing a CD, and getting it in stores becoming more and more distant in the rear view — Metallica are toying with new way to get their music to the fans. “We’re writing music and we’re going to be recording very soon,” says Ulrich. “At some point we’re going to want to share that with people that are interested in listening to it. So we gotta figure out ways we want to do that, from giving it away in cereal boxes to getting people to do handstands for it. We could come up with something wacky.”

Despite trying to be ahead of the curve on the release of the album, Metallica are far from finished with the new batch of tunes. “We’re still throwing ideas around. We work in stages. Some people will write a song from beginning to end in one go. We don’t do that,” Lars explains. “We’ll develop, like, 10 ideas and do a couple cycles. We’ll do a verse, chorus and maybe an intro, and then we’ll leave them and go develop 10 other ideas. So it’s a little early yet because we haven’t gone back yet and started tweaking anything. Right now we’re throwing ideas at the canvas and picking out great riffs.”

Metallica will take a break from recording the album to host the inaugural ‘Orion Music + More‘ festival, which runs June 23 – 24 in Atlantic City, N.J.

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