No stranger to odd musical detours — whether it be Metal Machine Music or his most recent project, the Tai Chi-influenced Hudson River Wind Meditations — the legendary Lou Reed has a particularly unlikely musical partner for his next studio album: thrash-metal titans Metallica.
In news revealed tonight by Rolling Stone and a post on Metallica’s website, Reed and the Bay Area rockers have spent the past few months recording 10 Reed-penned songs together — an album that Rolling Stone likens to “a raging union of his 1973 noir classic, Berlin, and Metallica’s ’86 crusher, Master of Puppets.”
The record is as-yet-untitled, and since neither Metallica nor Reed are on a label currently, it’s not yet known who’ll put it out, or when. As the band notes on its website — which tonight posted the photo above of Reed with James Hetfield — “we can’t wait for you to listen to the finished record.”
Reed told Rolling Stone that it was “a marriage made in heaven. I knew it from the first day we played together: ‘Oh, man, this is perfection, right in front of me.'” The band first played with Reed in 2009 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 25th anniversary concert; you can see footage of Metallica and Reed performing “Sweet Jane” below.
“We knew from then,” Reed told Rolling Stone, “that we were made for each other.”
See video of Metallica and Lou Reed playing together in 2009 after the jump…
OMG. This is rad news.
I dunno, Lou. Made a cringe a bit. When is he gonna collabo with L-Boogie? Laurie A
Too late, I stand corrected. Google is always humbling.
It’s like Neil Young and Pearl Jam!