Metallica say a new track they've debuted at a live show represents their "creative headspace".
The group performed eight-minute long 'The Lords of Summer' at their show in Bogota, Colombia on Sunday March 16, and drummer Lars Ulrich promised the track - the first original music since the 2012 EP 'Beyond Magnetic', which was comprised of outtakes from 2008 LP 'Death Magnetic' - is a good taster for fans of what they have coming up.
Speaking before the show, he told Rolling Stone: "We promised our fans we'd play a new song and we've been writing and creating away and we're going to throw something at them on Sunday.
"We have something lined up that is fairly representative of where our creative headspace is at right now. It's one of those things that's like, 'Here, we're writing and we're creating.' "
However, the rocker admitted the track may not survive onto their next album in its current state.
He added: "We did the same thing when we went out and played a bunch of dates in 2006. We were writing and played two different new songs over the course of that summer, and none of them made the record ['Death Magnetic'].
"One was called 'New Song 1' - going out on a creative limb, here - and the other was called 'New Song 2.' That's how deep we went. There was a couple of pieces in 'New Song 1,' some of the middle bit ended up in 'All Nightmare Long,' and the intro bit ended up in 'The End of the Line.' That's how we work; stuff just gets changed around, moved over and this goes over there and the rest of that gets sacked and that ends up in the intro in song five.
"So who knows what's going to happen with this stuff."
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