“Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire”…which is Metallica‘s tenth album please.

And it sounds like we might get it soon. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich recently told Metal Forces that the songwriting portion of the process is nearly complete, and that they’ll soon turn to compiling and preparing the as-yet-unnamed studio record. “We’re now coming towards the end of the musical creative process and we’re starting to look ahead and the process of how we’re gonna share this record with the universe. The month of June is basically when we’re gonna sit down and figure what we’re gonna do with it all; what we’re gonna call it and what’s gonna be on it.”

The foursome have been recording at Metallica HQ in San Rafael, CA with Greg Fidelman, who also engineered Metallica’s most recent album, Death Magnetic (excepting that godforsaken collaborative Lou Reed album, Lulu). “Greg Fidelman is 24/7 on this record and has been since last summer,” Ulrich continued. “He’s doing an insanely great job and has been putting his heart and soul in it pretty much every waking moment of his life in helping us engineer and produce this record.”

Ulrich asserted that the album is nearing completion, but he can’t guarantee that it will be released this year. “If the record doesn’t come out this year then it won’t be because it’s not done. It will be because there’s some sort of cosmic reason that it would be smarter to hold onto it until next year. But the record will be done this summer.”

Let’s hope the cosmos aligns with Metallica’s timeline for this next release, because now that it’s on the horizon, nothing else matters.

Let us know your hopes and dreams for this next record in the comments below.

Image: Metallica