.

Metallica Launch New Record Label

Metal band now owns all their master recordings

Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo of Metallica
Angel Delgado/Clasos.com/LatinContent/Getty Images
November 30, 2012 12:35 PM ET

Metallica has launched a new record label, Blackened Recordings in conjunction with the band taking ownership of all their master recordings, including music and videos, as part of a contract provision Metallica negotiated with Warner Bros. in 1994. The move means the end of the band's 28-year relationship with the label. 

Inside Metallica Guitarist Kirk Hammett's 'Horror Business'

"It's always been about control for us as a band," drummer Lars Ulrich said in a statement. "Forming Blackened Recordings is the ultimate in independence, giving us 100 percent control and putting us in the driver's seat of our own creative destiny."

Metallica will release Quebec Magnetic, a live DVD taken from two 2009 World Magnetic shows in Quebec City, on December 10th. For more information, visit Metallica's website.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

prev
Music Main Next

blog comments powered by Disqus
Daily Newsletter

Get the latest RS news in your inbox.

Sign up to receive the Rolling Stone newsletter and special offers from RS and its
marketing partners.

X

We may use your e-mail address to send you the newsletter and offers that may interest you, on behalf of Rolling Stone and its partners. For more information please read our Privacy Policy.

Song Stories

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The Joy Formidable | 2011

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”

More Song Stories entries »