Metallica fans, we have another update on the band's next album. The band has been stacking riffs for some time, prepping for their first full-length release since 'Death Magnetic' dropped in 2008. Though Metallica's next album seems to be a long way off, drummer Lars Ulrich has revealed that in his eyes, the album is 90-percent written.

Back in April, Ulrich claimed that Metallica was in the "fourth inning" of creating the album. Although the claim insinuates the thrashers are one-third of the way through the process, a new quote from Ulrich puts the band at a much closer finish.

"I can tell you, all kidding aside, I'm pretty convinced that 90 percent of the record is actually written, it's just gotta be kind of assembled between all those riffs," Ulrich tells Metal Zone (watch above). "It's just a matter of connecting this to this and sort of shaping it into a song. And so, I'm pretty psyched about that."

The drummer adds, "When we write songs, we don't really write a song at a time, we write kind of more like… We take passes at a bunch of different things at the same time. So we'll, sort of, develop maybe ten ideas, and then we'll go back and develop those ten ideas again, and then we'll, sort of, keep embellishing them, I guess is the word. We rarely write a song, and now we're gonna write a second song. We sort of have 10 balls in the air, or 20 balls in the air, and then we sort of keep moving them around, moving sections around and embellishing, like, 'Take this intro and put it over here.' So it's more that type of thing, is what our songwriting sessions often are." [via Blabbermouth]

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