A move that stirred up rampant speculation recently was the removal of several glowing reviews of Metallica's upcoming album from various sites who were given a chance to sample a rough mix of the LP. The move was seen by many as a bizarre attempt at complete control by the band, especially considering that the reviews were actually uniformly positive.

































Apparently, Metallica were not behind the removal of the reviews at all. In fact, they were completely unaware of the situation, touring in Europe. Upon returning from their tour, they realized that their management had had these articles removed, and made this statement on their Web site in an attempt to mend the situation:

"While we occasionally enjoy reading the various comments, rumors, speculation, reviews, gossip and all the good that the Internet brings, rarely do we feel the desire/need to respond to the 'blogosphere' ... Hey, everyone is entitled to have their thoughts and opinions, right? However, once we re-surfaced on Tuesday after a few weeks on tour in Europe, we were informed that someone at Q Prime (our managers) had made the error of asking a few publications to take down reviews of the rough mixes from the new record that were posted on their sites. Our response was 'WHY?!!! Why take down mostly positive reviews of the new material and prevent people from getting psyched about the next record ... that makes no sense to us!' So after a few rounds of managerial ear spank and sentencing everyone at Q Prime to 20 push-ups each, we figured why not take matters into our own hands and just post the links here on our site."

Additionally, Metallica has updated the mysterious artwork that surfaced on their Web site earlier this week. Many believe that this the band's way of slowly introducing the artwork and title of the new album. Check out the updated artwork below: