Lars Ulrich says Metallica have written close to 20 new songs for the new album

Metallica's drummer Lars Ulrich, in a recent interview, unveiled that the metal giants have close to 20 songs written for their new album.

Ulrich said:

We are fucking in it. We've got lots of songs, and we're honing them and tweaking them. It's pretty close.

The drummer also explained how the band is working on the new material:

In our world, there's been a distinct difference between the creative phase and the recording phase. With this project, we're trying to bridge the two a little more organically and not have there be such a great divide between the processes. We want to see if we can bring some of the creative curiosity, the impulsive stuff that happens when you're first playing a song into the studio. You want to tweak it and get it good, but you also want to record it in a way where it doesn't feel labored over and overthought. We're trying to figure out where that line is.

So, according to Ulrich, the band will likely enter the pre-production recording phase in the near future, probably next month.

Metallica are working on their tenth studio album, the follow-up to 2008's "Death Magnetic".