METALLICA will release its long-awaited new album, “Hardwired…To Self-Destruct”, on November 18. The follow-up to 2008’s “Death Magnetic” consists of two discs, with nearly 80 minutes of music.

Says the band: “‘Hardwired…’ represents the next phase of our journey as METALLICA and we are so excited to share it with you.

“If anyone was tuned into radio station 93X in Minneapolis earlier today, you heard the world debut of the first track, ‘Hardwired’, and we’re hoping you’ll hear a lot more of it in the coming days.

“Produced by Greg Fidelman, along with James [Hetfield] and Lars [Ulrich], this is our eleventh studio album and is available for pre-order in a variety of configurations including 12 songs on a double CD, vinyl, digital download, as well as a deluxe version with the riffs that were the origins of the album. Everyone who pre-orders the album through Metallica.com will receive an instant download of the song ‘Hardwired’.”

Disc One

01. Hardwired
02. Atlas, Rise!
03. Now That We’re Dead
04. Moth Into Flame
05. Am I Savage?
06. Halo On Fire

Disc Two

01. Confusion
02. Dream No More
03. ManUNkind
04. Here Comes Revenge
05. Murder One
06. Spit Out The Bone

Disc Three (Deluxe Edition Only)

01. Lords Of Summer
02. Riff Charge (Riff Origins)
03. N.W.O.B.H.M. A.T.M. (Riff Origins)
04. Tin Shot (Riff Origins)
05. Plow (Riff Origins)
06. Sawblade (Riff Origins)
07. RIP (Riff Origins)
08. Lima (Riff Origins)
09. 91 (Riff Origins)
10. MTO (Riff Origins)
11. RL72 (Riff Origins)
12. Frankenstein (Riff Origins)
13. CHI (Riff Origins)
14. X Dust (Riff Origins)

Watch the official video for “Hardwired” below. The band debuted the track in a Facebook Live broadcast from their studio in San Rafael, California, where Ulrich and bassist Robert Trujillo talked about the upcoming album. Ulrich also revealed that a METALLICA pop-up store will launch in Minneapolis, where the band is scheduled to play a concert on Saturday. “The album’s not actually finished,” Ulrich said. “It will be done in the next week or so.”

Ulrich recently spoke to Citizens Of Humanity magazine about the musical direction of the group’s long-awaited follow-up to 2008’s “Death Magnetic”. He said: “It definitely sounds like METALLICA. It’s probably a little less frenetic than the last record. The last one [producer] Rick Rubin really encouraged us to for the first time be inspired by our past. It was the first time we sort of looked in the rearview mirror. This time around it’s a little bit of a different thing.”

Ulrich continued: “We’re not working with Rick, we’re working with the engineer from the last record, who’s producing, Greg Fidelman. So there’s some of the same production elements at play, but we’re expanding a little bit on the sonics. It’s probably a bit more of a diverse record than the last one. It’s exciting, but I don’t have quite the perspective yet.”

Ulrich also addressed the eight-year gap between studio albums, the longest of the band’s career, by saying: “I think what’s happened is our families and our domestic responsibilities are so important to us now, so we just have a new model. We’re sort of constantly doing something but never to the point of the needle going in the red, but METALLICA really hasn’t sort of shut down since around 2005, and it’s a model that works for us.”

He added: “We never work at 110 percent to the point where we drive ourselves nuts, but are sort of constantly working at two-thirds, you know — when we make the record we’re writing and we’re recording, but we’re doing it incrementally. There’s always stuff going on. It’s the way we like it. It keeps us engaged.”

Ulrich told The Pulse Of Radio not long ago that METALLICA no longer wants to devote large chunks of time to any one project. “You know, METALLICA, in order for it to be true and pure and honest, has to be fun,” he said. “And so the days of, you know, writing for a year and then recording for a year and then going on the road for three years — those kind of endlessly long cycles — they’re just behind us. I don’t think we have the stamina to do anything for those elongated periods of time any longer.”

METALLICA worked on the new disc on and off over the past few years, in between other projects that included a series of short tours, a film, the restoration of some of their early albums and other projects.