Metallica, Lou Reed name new album 'Lulu'

Metallica and Lou Reed have announced the name of their new album together.

The musical pairing revealed that their first collaborative album will be named Lulu and is due to be released on October 31.

The metal band and former frontman of The Velvet Underground have also launched an official website for the project.



They wrote on the site: "Lulu was inspired by German expressionist writer Frank Wedekind's plays 'Earth Spirit' and 'Pandora's Box', which tell a story of a young abused dancer's life and relationships.

"Since their publication in the early 1900s, the plays have been the inspiration for a silent film, an opera, and countless other creative endeavours."

They continued: "Originally the lyrics and musical landscape were sketched out by Lou for a theatrical production in Berlin, but after coming together with the Metallica boys for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concerts in New York in 2009 all guilty parties knew they wanted to make more music together.

"Lou was inspired enough by that performance to recently ask the band to join him in taking his theatrical Lulu piece to the next level and so starting in early May of this year we were all camped out recording at HQ studios in Northern California, bringing us to today and ten complete songs."

Reed recently described his upcoming collaboration with Metallica as "a marriage made in heaven".

> Lou Reed: 'Metallica collaboration is best thing ever'