Days after Metallica announced the impending arrival of their new LP Hardwired… to Self-Destruct, the band debuted the album’s lead single “Hardwired” during their Saturday night gig at Minneapolis’ US Bank Stadium, only the second concert held at the new football stadium. The pummeling new track popped up during the encore of the concert, which was live streamed on Pandora.
Prior to the Minneapolis show, drummer Lars Ulrich hinted to Rolling Stone that the gig could mark the live debut of “Hardwired.” “Let’s put it this way: The chances of playing a song from the new album have increased since we shared a new song with the world,” Ulrich said.
“But one thing we realized when we were making the album is that we put a lot of time and effort into making these songs good and, given a choice, we would rather people hear the recorded version than a live version on some shitty iPhone recording from 900 rows back. So read into that what you will.”
The drummer also talked about the creation of the track, the only Hardwired… to Self-Destruct song to premiere at the Minnesota concert.
“That’s actually the last song we wrote for the record. We started this album by throwing different ideas around. The shape of it, as a collection of songs, didn’t come into focus until we were deep into it. At that point, the songs were getting tighter, shorter and leaner,” Ulrich said.
“A couple of months ago, we were sitting there taking stock of the record and thought maybe we should write one more fast, little crazy song, and that became ‘Hardwired.’ It just kind of happened. I think James [Hetfield] and I wrote and recorded it in less than a week, which, for us, is basically a nanosecond.”
Hardwired… to Self-Destruct is out November 18th.
via Rollingstone.com