Metallica have posted professional footage of drummer Lars Ulrich rocking out onstage with The Sword and frontman James Hetfield stepping up to the mike with Machine Head.

The Sword song "Freya" and the Machine Head number "Aesthetics of Hate" were shot on May 16 in Cologne, Germany. Click "more" to watch both clips.

Seeing that Metallica's newest album Death Magnetic is, in many ways, a throwback to the ferocity and complexity of 1988's ...And Justice For All, it's not surprising that the band has returned to the narrative silent film style of their first video, "One," for the nine-minute "All Nightmare Long." However, the band may have delved too far into the concept and strayed too far from the music.

The story line is pretty cool, combining elements of horror movies like "Reanimator" and "Night of the Living Dead" and cold war films such as "Fail-Safe." The plot involves some alien or meteor explosion in Russia that reveals a new scorpion-like life form whose DNA is capable of reviving dead tissue. Following years of research, the entity is used in a lethal biological weapon, which is dropped from a hot air balloon on the U.S. in an effort to contain America's use of nukes on the Soviets. The contagion quickly spreads and zombies spread across the nation, consuming all in their path.

The biggest problem with "All Nightmare Long" is it doesn't feature any shots of the Metallica -- not even as zombies. Also, the story doesn't really parallel the lyrics of the song. So, in the end it's kind of like blaring Death Magnetic while watching a creepy old movie on the Sci-Fi Channel. That the video is nine minutes long only adds to the dissociative process. Damn fine song, though. Click "more" to watch the mini-movie and let the carnage begin.

Metallica's "All Nightmare Long" video.

Instead of our usual Friday audio podcast, we've ramped it up a little bit in commemoration of our 20th anniversary celebration of "Headbangers Ball." We've put together a video podcast for you, and not just any video podcast, a video podcast with Metallica founder Lars Ulrich that was shot at the band's San Francisco practice space/hangout/home studio Metallica HQ.

During the interview, Ulrich talks about the birth of and enduring influence of "Headbangers Ball," referencing ex-host Riki Rachtman and some of the highlights of the program; the uniting force of the program; and the importance of Metallica's "One" video, which broke the band into the MTV world.

Ulrich also discusses the tremendous success of the band's new record Death Magnetic, the perceived "failure" of its last album St. Anger, the decision to revisit elements from past releases for the new disc, what producer Rick Rubin brought to the band and the challenge and importance of relinquishing control and rolling with the punches. Click "more" to stream or download the interview and watch a couple live clips. And don't miss the rest of our "Headbangers Ball" 20th anniversary celebration, which concludes Saturday night with a two hour special that runs from 10 to 12 a.m. EST on MTV2 and features special guests Dee Snider, Riki Rachtman and Jamey Jasta.

click here to download video podcast with Lars Ulrich or stream it below.

And here's the band performing "The Day That Never Comes" on Chilean MTV.

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England's BBC Radio recently ran a fascinating interview with Professor William Irwin, a professor of philosophy at King's College and the author of the book "Metallica and Philosophy."

During the discussion, Irwin draws parallels between the songs of Metallica and the writings of famous philosophers, including Rene Descartes, Plato, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.

The specific tracks discussed are "Master of Puppets," "One" and "Forever I May Roam," and each is backed with Apocalyptica covering Metallica.

Bravo William, just don't try to convince us the title Kill 'Em All is based on existential ponderings or that there's anything deep about a line like "Gimme fuel, gimme fire, gimme that which I desire" ("Fuel").

Also available for your reading pleasure, lengthy excepts from Irwin's book.

Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett has spoken out about the band's upcoming album, which he says will be the group's best record in 15 years. In an interview with Austrian Web site Krone.at -- which was translated into English by Blabbermouth.net -- the guitarist added that for the first time since 1988's ...And Justice For All, Metallica are bolting the doors and coming up with some brutal thrash riffs.

"It's our eleventh studio album, but it feels like our sixth," Hammett said. "It's just a really spectacular range of songs. This time we're not afraid to refer to our past music in order to create future music. People will see that we've kind of embraced our old vocabulary again and are using that vocabulary to express new things. I'm super excited to make this album, finish it and release it — 'cause then we can go out and play it to the people. We might have stretched our cores a little too much in the last fifteen years, but we've always came back to what we originally are and have been. I think with this album we're definitely going a little more back into our roots."

The yet untitled disc will include "a lot of really, really fast songs, [and] a whole lot of really heavy stuff," Hammett said. "There are some songs on that album that are so fast, that [frontman] James [Hetfield] and I kinda look at each other and go, 'Ouch! Our wrist are gonna fall off.'"

Also, the band are no longer down-tuning their instruments as they have on their past few offerings. Instead, they're returning to the higher tuning they used on their first five albums. "Because we've done that, James' voice sounds more like it did in the '80s than it did in the '90s," Hammett said. "There's a lot of changes that we've made, but I believe that they are all for the better."

For the complete Q&A with Hammett, look no further.

And look no further for Metallica at their thrashiest; here's the vid for "Whiplash":

Here's an idea: Bring back Dave Mustaine.

He has the edge and the metal cred Metallica needs to regain. There needs to be some tension and competitive rivalry within the band to make them great again. Imagine the speed of Mustaine's boney fingers racing over the chunky palm muted chords of Hetfield.

As far as who would sing, let's introduce a new genre: Thrash Metal Duets.

We may have just reinvented metal.