72 Seasons

72 Seasons is the eleventh studio album by the legendary thrash metal band Metallica, released on April 14, 2023.

The band first spoke about the album in March 2019, during an interview with The Music, where the band’s bassist Robert Trujillo said that the band had begun jamming on new material for its next album and that it would be releasing “a lot sooner than the previous two did.”

The following month, during an interview with Mixdown, guitarist Kirk Hammett said that the band have tentative plans to enter the studio after the conclusion of their WorldWired Tour.

In April 2020, drummer Lars Ulrich stated in an interview with Marc Benioff that the band could work on its next studio album during quarantine. Then in June 2020, Trujillo told The Vinyl Guide that the band was “excited about cultivating new ideas” for its new album. Trujillo also stated that the band was working towards eventually entering a studio to record the new album.

Then in November 2020, Ulrich stated in an interview with Phoebe Bridgers for Rolling Stone that the band was three to four weeks into writing the new album. He then followed up in January 2021 that progress for the album had been “glacial,” while vocalist James Hetfield stated in March 2021 that they were writing a few songs admist the COVID-19 outbreak.

The band announced the arrival of their first album in 6 years (succeeding Hardwired… to Self-Destruct, released in 2016) with the announcement of all the tour dates for 2023 and 2024, along with a music video for the first single (and sixth track of the album) “Lux Æterna.”

On the bands storepage James Hetfield explained the album title:

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. A possible pigeonholing around what kind of personality we are. I think the most interesting part of this is the continued study of those core beliefs and how it affects our perception of the world today. Much of our adult experience is a reenactment or reaction to these childhood experiences. Prisoners of childhood or breaking free of those bondages we carry.

The band would continue to release three new singles for the album during the span of January and March 2023: “Screaming Suicide,” “If Darkness Had a Son,” and “72 Seasons.”