See James Hetfield Play Crushing New Metallica Riff in Studio

In celebration of Metallica’s newly redesigned website, Lars Ulrich made a video that, in part, offers a peek at the group’s ongoing recording sessions. James Hetfield, who jokes that he’s “playing drums,” plays a few crushingly heavy riffs around the two-minute mark of the video. As Ulrich exits the studio at the end of the clip, the group’s frontman plays doomy phrasing along to a recording of Ulrich’s drums; the drummer opens up the studio door at the end of the clip, too, to offer a mid-tempo grooving riff.

The group has been working on new songs since at least last year, when they debuted new tune “Lords of Summer” on their Metallica by Request tour. In March, Ulrich told Rolling Stone that “the creative elements [of the album] are close to being done,” adding at the time that, “we are fucking in it.” Late last month, guitarist Kirk Hammett told Ultimate Classic Rock that he was waiting for Hetfield to finish recording so he could work on his parts. As for the direction of the music, he said that “a lot of it was along the lines of Death Magnetic,” the band’s most recent, non-collaborative studio album, which came out in 2008.

In other Metallica news, the group has announced that it will play a gig in San Francisco a day before the Super Bowl. The gig, officially titled “The Night Before,” will take place on February 6th in San Francisco. Cage the Elephant will open the show.