TO THE RESCUE: With England’s biggest annual...

TO THE RESCUE: With England’s biggest annual hard-rock festival set to be scrapped due to the lack of a suitable headliner, Metallica has rushed in to save the day. The Bay Area metal band will interrupt sessions for its next album to top the bill of the Monsters of Rock festival Aug. 26 on the scenic grounds of the ancient Castle Donington.

“It’s funny thinking of us as the white knights,” drummer Lars Ulrich says.

Ulrich says the new album, the group’s first studio release since its hugely successful 1991 release “Metallica,” is going well, with plans calling for it to be in stores by next spring. He describes the new music as “looser, livelier and less mechanical” than the last album’s.

“It’s still 100% Metallica music,” he says. “But I think it breathes a little more. It’s less staccato and machine gun-like. It sounds less confined and more confident. Since the mid-’80s, people have been looking to us to write about all these really heavy subjects, but I think we’re getting a little lighter and a little more personal.”