Depending on whether you're a fan of Metallica or not, this will either come as good or bad news - but the metal legends will finish their new album this summer.

The band's last studio album was 2008's 'Death Magnetic', although they released 'Lulu', a divisive collaborative album with Lou Reed in 2011.

James Hetfield and co. have allegedly been working on the album since last November, although drummer Lars Ulrich was cagey about when it might actually be released in a new interview with Metal Forces.

He said: "If the record doesn't come out this year, then it won't be because it's not done. It will be because there's some sort of cosmic reason that it would be smarter to hold onto it until next year. But the record will be done this summer."

He added that they will make a lot of decisions on the album's tracklisting and title this month: "We’re now coming towards the end of the musical creative process and we’re starting to look ahead and the process of how we’re gonna share this record with the universe. The month of June is basically when we're gonna sit down and figure what we're gonna do with it all; what we're gonna call it and what's gonna be on it.

"[Engineer/producer] Greg Fidelman is 24/7 on this record and has been since last summer. He's doing an insanely great job and has been putting his heart and soul in it pretty much every waking moment of his life in helping us engineer and produce this record."