METALLICA is rumored to be planning a U.S. stadium tour this summer, with support from AVENGED SEVENFOLD and VOLBEAT. The trek, which will consist of at least twenty shows, is expected to be officially announced later this month. METALLICA has not done a full-length U.S. tour in more than seven years, but lead guitarist Kirk Hammett recently promised that the band will end that dry spell in 2017. Speaking with Billboard, Hammett said that the band's home country will finally get the trek it deserves. "We're very excited about it because it's been a long, long time since we've done a proper American tour," he said. "I mean, we've done European tours, Asian tours, South American tours, but we have not done a proper American tour as of late. So we're very, very excited about it, and we're very excited to be able to do it bringing new material to all our fans out there." METALLICA will be touring in support of its tenth studio album, "Hardwired... To Self-Destruct", the band's first all-new studio effort in eight years. The album went to No. 1 in 58 countries, including the U.S., where it topped The Billboard 200 album chart. Hammett also hinted at METALLICA bringing out a "special stage" for the tour, adding, "It's gonna be really cool, really fun and very METALLICA." As previously reported, METALLICA was forced to play a shortened show on Friday night (February 3) at the Royal Arena in Copenhagen, Denmark, and cancel a second on Sunday (February 5) after frontman James Hetfield became ill and was placed on strict vocal rest. Hetfield recently said on the Nerdist podcast that the band will cap its live schedule starting in 2017 at around fifty shows a year. He explained: "My body has told me to tell these guys that fifty shows a year is kind of what we can do, so make the best of those." Drummer Lars Ulrich told The Pulse Of Radio a while back how METALLICA has changed the way it tours. "The old days of a year and a half on the road, I mean, that's not going to happen again," he said. "If our success has bought us anything, it's the freedom to do these things the way we want to do them, on our own agenda, on our own time frame. We don't really even need to have, like they say in the business, a 'product' out there. We can just sort of go out and tour if we wake up one morning and feel like it." Assuming that Hetfield has regained his voice, METALLICA will play two more shows at the Royal Arena this month — on February 5, February 7 and February 9 — before performing at the 59th annual Grammy Awards on February 12, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. The ceremony will be televised at 8:00 p.m. on CBS. The band is nominated this year in the "Best Rock Song" category for the track "Hardwired". METALLICA also has plans to hit the rest of Europe and South America in the months ahead. The band will play an intimate show for around 3,000 or so fans at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on February 12. But tickets were made available only to Citi cardmembers as part of a new Citi-sponsored program called "Citi Sound Vault." METALLICA's sole other North American date so far is May 21 at the Rock On The Range festival in Columbus, Ohio.
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