METALLICA have begun rehearsing for their upcoming "Escape from the Studio '06" tour, which is scheduled to kick off June 3 in Nurburgring, Germany at the Rock Am Ring Festival.

METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett recently told the Artisan News Service that the band have "about fifteen songs" written for the follow-up to 2003's "St. Anger", which they hope to release in early 2007. In a short interview conducted at the MAP MusiCares MAP Fund concert on May 12 honoring Hammett's METALLICA bandmate James Hetfield, Kirk admitted the band is really hitting the song writing groove, even busting out two to three new songs per week.

"It's pretty early in the process," Hammett told the Artisan News Service. "We have about fifteen songs or so and we're just going to keep on writing songs until we feel we have the best dozen songs and get those into the studio. That's when I think Rick (Rubin) comes in and does his thing. But it's really really early still, we're just writing the music and that's going along really well. Sometimes we're writing two or three songs per week, which is great. It's just us four in the studio, which is really different now."

Picures stolen without permission from MetOnTour.com.