Metallica – 72 Seasons (2xLP)

140-gram double LP

12th studio album, the follow-up to Hardwired...To Self Destruct

Metallica has confirmed the title and release date of its forthcoming 12th studio album: 72 Seasons will be available April 14, 2023 on the band's own Blackened Recordings.

Produced by Greg Fidelman with founding members James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, and clocking in at more than 77 minutes, the 12-track album is Metallica's first full length collection of new material since 2016's Hardwired...To Self-Destruct.

The band has dropped the first single from the album, "Lux Æterna," a three-and-a-half-minute-long blast that recalls the band's early albums, which got a big revival with the prominent use of their 1986 classic "Master of Puppets" in the series "Stranger Things" earlier in 2022.

Speaking on the concept of the album title, James Hetfield said: "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 reenactment or reaction to these childhood experiences. Prisoners of childhood or breaking free of those bondages we carry."