Metallica stick with Rick Rubin for next album

Magnetic attraction: Rick Rubin

Metallica aim to stick with producer Rick Rubin to work on the album they’ll record in 2013.

He wasn’t involved in Lulu, last year’s collaboration with Lou Reed, but he worked on 2008′s Death Magnetic and its little-brother follow-up Beyond Magnetic.

Frontman James Hetfield tells Metal Hammer: “He’s a different kind of producer. He’s challenging. He’s a very cut and dried, to-the-point kind of producer – but he’s also very open to lots of ideas.

“The main thing for us was getting to the core and essence of Metallica, and that’s the reason we chose to work with him. He gets the best out of artists who have been around for a while, I believe. That’s what we wanted him for.”

Drummer Lars Ulrich reports: “I saw Rick in LA and we talked about him coming to San Fransisco in March or April to start talking about the process,” he reports. “But we’ve got another couple of balls in the air with out movie and live dates.

“Rick is not a one-trick pony,” Ulrich continues. “He builds a particular ease around whatever your task is. Whatever we want to do with the next record, he’ll help us with that.”

Rubin is currently working with Black Sabbath on their first album with Ozzy Osbourne since 1979 and hr was behind the desk for I’m With You, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ first record with new guitarist Josh Klinghoffer. But he’s been the subject of downbeat headlines in recent times.

Billy Gibbons last month suggested the producer was to blame delays facing ZZ Top’s fifteenth studio album, which has been in progress since 2008. Gibbons said: “The band is wondering, ‘Where is this thing? When do we hear it?’ He’s got a somewhat unorthodox way of doing just about everything he does.”

That followed a furious onstage outburst from Slipknot and Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor, who called Rubin “overrated” and “overpaid,” adding: “I will never work with him again as long as I fucking live.”

In 2012 Muse thanked the deskman for “teaching us how not to produce.”

Meanwhile, Metallica have begun a series of shows in which they perform their classic Black Album in full – but they’re performing the album backwards. They’re also gearing up for their own Orion Festival on June 23-24 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.