Virginia Tech's women’s basketball team has a No. 1 seed in this year’s NCAA tournament, which means that they get to play their games at home. The NCAA has been trying to make the tournament games more of a neutral environment, so they’ve banned Virgian Tech's team from playing their song - 'Enter Sandman' by Metallica, the USA Today reports. Well, that didn't stop fans from singing the song.

Metalica have bought Furnace Record Pressing, a vinyl pressing plant based in Alexandria, Virginia, in order to keep up with demand for their back catalog on vinyl, in addition to meeting their needs for their forthcoming album, '72 Seasons', coming put in April. The band first started working with Furnace, one of the largest vinyl pressing companies in the U.S., in 2008, Loudwire reports. The company has helped keep Metallica’s catalog in print along with expansive box set reissues of 'Metallica', 'Master of Puppets', 'Ride the Lightning', 'Kill 'Em All', '...And Justice for All', and others. The plant will continue to press non-Metallica projects.

Metallica have announced their new album, titled '72 Seasons', which will come out on April 14th, and will be their first in seven years, Blabbermouth reports. Its first single, 'Lux Æterna' is a light trash song with a focus on melodic vocals. Band's frontman James Hetfield explained the album’s idea - “72 seasons. The first 18 years of our lives that form our true or false selves. The concept that we were told ‘who we are’ by our parents... Much of our adult experience is reenactment or reaction to these childhood experiences. Prisoners of childhood or breaking free of those bondages we carry”. Metallica have also unveiled dates for a massive 2023-2024 world tour that will see the band play two dates (with unique sets) in each city, and feature such opening bands as Pantera, Mammoth WVH, Five Finger Death Punch, Ice Nine Kills, and Architects.

Metallica has announced the opening of The Metallica Black Box which will offer an unprecedented and ongoing deep dive into every era of Metallica from the early 1980s garage days up to its present status as hard rock stars. The project debited with The Black Album Exhibition, the Black Box, Loudwire reports.

Metallica have offered their band wisdom via MasterClass, as the first band to give a class on the streaming platform. In the course, they teach strategies for growing and staying together as a band, how to collaborate creatively, and develop and maintain a relationship with an audience, among other topics. The importance of communication is key - the band members point out.

Metallica’s landmark 1991 self-titled fifth LP has returned to the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart for the first time in 29 years, Consequence reports. The album reached position 9 with 37,000 units earned for the week. The album’s increased sales were fueled by various reissues marking its 30th anniversary. 'Metallica' remains the top-selling album in the U.S. since MRC Data began electronically tracking music sales in 1991, with 17.3 million copies sold. Drake extends his No1 stay on the chart as the set earns 236,000 equivalent album units, Billboard reports

“Thirty years of the Black Album, it’s a pretty big year. We’re overachievers and we’re perfectionists. We think outside the box and we try to be the first at things. There’s no nostalgia driving this band; we used to be very fearful of it” - Metallica's James Hetfield says in a Guardian interview ahead of 52-track covers album, 'The Metallica Blacklist'. Hetfield insists “We’re still explorers. A project like the Blacklist is proof of that. Someone once told me: ‘The rear-view mirror is smaller than the windshield for a reason’".

Jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington has released his cover version of Metallica's 'My Friend Of Misery', Blabbermouth reports. This version sounds nothing like metal - Kamasi Washington has turned 'My Friend Of Misery' into an astral jazz song, insisting on virtuosity, common to the original. This cover is one of more than 50 songs which are included on Metallica's massive new covers compilation called 'The Metallica Blacklist', which features artists' takes on 'Black Album' songs.

Phoebe Bridgers has shared her cover of Metallica’s 'Nothing Else Matters', about to be released on the covers album 'The Metallica Blacklist'. Bridgers said - "I feel like my version almost sounds baroque. Literally, James [Hetfield] does all sorts of weird octave jumps and stuff that I can’t do, and I almost have a Billie Eilish approach of right by the microphone, performing it the opposite of them, which was really fun to lean into”.

St. Vincent has redone Metallica's 'Sad But True', adding a ton of sexy and cool, making for a surprisingly good cover. Jason Isbell goes a step further with the same song - himself and the 400 Unit reimagined 'The Black Album' classic as a thrilling country rock barn stomper. Both songs appear on Metallica’s upcoming collection, 'The Metallica Blacklist', a companion album celebrating the 30th anniversary of 'The Black Album'. Set for release digitally on September 10th and physically on October 1st, 'The Metallica Blacklist' also boasts contributions from Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan, J Balvin, Phoebe Bridgers, My Morning Jacket, Weezer, Mac DeMarco, Cage the Elephant, Kamasi Washington, Portugal. the Man, IDLES, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Moses Sumney.

A thought-provoking article in Loudwire about the age rock musicians were at when they wrote their classic albums/songs. All Black Sabbath members were at the age of 20/21 when they wrote their debut, Kurt Cobain was 23 in 1990 when he wrote Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', as old as equally left-handed Jimi Hendrix was when he wrote 'Are You Experienced'. Metallica were 21, 22, and 23 when they wrote their masterpiece 'Master of Puppets', while Silverchair members, at the time of their multiplatinum debut 'Frogstomp', were just children - 14 years old!

R'n'b singer and TikTok star Zaria posted a couple of clips with a Metallica T-shirt on, which made some TikTokers attack her for rockin' Metallica merch, with one asking her to "name three Metallica songs". Well, that's when she stole the show - "Really? Only three? Only three songs? How 'bout I play 'em on guitar for you", Zaria replied and played parts of three Metallica songs on guitar, 'Master of Puppets', 'Enter Sandman' and 'One'. Loudwire really enjoyed the don't-judge-the-book-by-its-cover story.

Queen and Metallica earned more from album sales than anyone else last year, according to a brand new The Highest Paid Musicians of 2019 report. Queen topped the list for album sales with $9.6 million, thanks in part to a massive boost from the Academy Award-winning biopic 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. Metallica arrived at No. 2 with an estimated $3.6M from album sales.

Metallica fans have voted 'Master of Puppets' as the most significant song by the band, Loudwire reports. The knockout tournament called "Some Kind of Bracket" started a month ago when Metallica initially distributed the contest's first-round bracket on social media with over 60 songs in the competition. On June 18, the semifinals found 'Master of Puppets' going up against 'Fade to Black' and 'One' battling 'Enter Sandman'. By June 22, the tournament had winnowed down to the 1989 single from '…And Justice for All' and the title track from Metallica's 1986 album. By the following day, a victor had emerged - 'Master of Puppets'.

An artificial intelligence bot was programmed to take in all of Metallica's lyrics using Markov Chain (a computer model for a certain type of probability), and wrote an old school Metallica-styled song 'Deliverance Rides', Loudwire reports. YouTuber Funk Turkey wrote the music for it, in style on '...And Justice For All' and 'Black Album', and sang the lyrics, here's some: "I can’t believe the death of day/The dark of wretched pain/Where I see the one thousand deaths/Never free in vain".

Madonna has donated $1 million to Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help fund research into creating a coronavirus vaccine. Pink, who recovered from coronavirus just recently, has pledged $500,000 to Philadelphia’s Temple University Hospital Fund, and $500,000 to the City of Los Angeles Mayor’s Emergency COVID-19 Crisis Fund. Metallica's charitable foundation, All Within My Hands, has announced four grants totaling $350,000 to Feeding America, Direct Relief, Crew Nation and the USBG National Charity Foundation. R'n'b singer H.E.R. has provided her team with money to support them over the coming months.

No Life Shaq is a 26-year-old hip-hop head and a YouTuber who started ith recording his reactions to hip-hop songs from the likes of Eminem, Meek Mill, 50 Cent, Busta Rhymes. In October 2018 made the decision to branch out, checking out songs he’d never before heard, starting with Metallica’s 'One', when he got something he would never have expected. Now, he has well over 1.5 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. Complex interviewed him about how he started and where he is now.

The Macrostylis metallicola is a worm-like creature that lives in the Clarion Clipperton Zone off the coast of Hawaii, at depths where the pressure is 400 times greater than that of the earth’s atmosphere. According to doctors Torben Riehl and Bart De Smet, who discovered the new creature, named it after the band due to specific details of their habitat, and Metallica is one of Riehl's favourite bands, the Phys reports.

Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds bandmate Warren Ellis have donated $500,000 to help those battling Australia’s bushfire emergency, Billboard reports. Metallica have also pledged to donate, A$750,000 (more than $500,000) to bushfire relief efforts in Australia, Rolling Stone reports. Elton John, Keith Urban, Nicole Kidman, Pink and Flume have already donated to Australian firefighters.

Six of ten top-grossing tours of 2019 were reunion tours or legacy acts, whose most prolific and successful musical output are years or even decades behind them. The top three earners were Ed Sheeran, Pink, and BTS, but then it travels back to the 20th century - Elton John, The Rolling Stones, Metallica, Paul McCartney, […]

Metallica's 'S&M2' movie screened last week in over 95 countries and more than 3,700 cinemas worldwide. The film achieved a significant global screen average of $1,500 with 460,000 admissions, earning in total $5.5 million, which makes it the largest ever global rock event cinema release in history, Loudwire reports. Thanks to the big demand, Trafalgar […]

Metallica has donated €250,000 to support the construction of Romania’s first pediatric oncology hospital. Band made the donation ahead of their sold-out show Wednesday in Romania’s National Arena, Billboard reports. In other Metallica related news, Tom G. Warrior, Celtic Frost frontman said he wasn't happy at all with how Kirk Hammett and Rob Trujillo covered […]

55.000 people attended Metallica's concert at Kantolan Tapahtumapuisto on Tuesday night, and that number made it the biggest concert ever in the country of Finland, Loudwire reports. Finland's entire population is 5.503 million, which means that one percept of the population, or every hundredth Finn, was watching Metallica play that evening. Continuing their tradition of […]

It's an illustrated children's book, covering band's history, "from, duh, A to Z!", as Metallica says. Well, maybe not exactly to "Z", maybe to "M" - it goes from "Garage Days", their early demo, "to Master of Puppets", their seminal album from 1996. If so, then there's a wrong guy on the cover, since in that […]

Metallica played recently in Manchester, and during their anthemic song 'Master of Puppets' it was pouring rain, with the band enjoying the atmosphere, especially Lars Ulrich who had raindrops jumping back from his drum kit (watch below). It's not actually dangerous, the rain and the numerous cables...

Metallica's Kirk Hammett and Rob Trujillo played a cover of Iron Maiden's classic 'Killers' at a recent London show, Loudwire reports. It's a rare occasion to hear Hammett sing, and he can't really sing, neither can Trujillo. Which is exactly why this is so cool - they had the guts to do something they most […]

Evan Adamson played drums with his favourite band Metallica in Amsterdam, Loudwire reports. He was invited onstage for his 13th birthday, as James Hetfield feigned surprise upon turning around and not seeing Lars Ulrich behind the kit: "Oh god, Lars shrunk. They put Lars in the wash. Told them not to put him in the […]

'Murder in the Front Row: The San Francisco Bay Area Thrash Metal Story' is a documentary about Bay Area thrash scene and includes over 50 interviews with principle members of Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax, Exodus, Testament, Death Angel and plenty more. Watch the first official trailer here. Loudwire...

A diverse array of artists honored the memory of Chris Cornell at the I Am The Highway tribute concert in Los Angeles last week. Members of Soundgarden, Audioslave, Temple Of The Dog, Foo Fighters, Metallica, Pearl Jam, Jane’s Addiction, Melvins, Queens Of The Stone Age, Black Sabbath and others took park. Rolling Stone...

Metallica's 'Black Album' hit No. 137 on Billboard's top 200 albums list last week, marking the 500th nonconsecutive week it has spent on the chart. Only three other albums have achieved this milestone since the weekly chart publications began in 1956. Both Bob Marley and The Wailers' 'Legend: The Best of Bob Marley and The Wailers', and […]