Metallica gets an early airing

Metallica’s new album “St. Anger” will be released Thursday, five days earlier than previously scheduled, in a maneuver meant to defuse the effects of piracy.

The highly anticipated album from the metal music veterans is already circulating on the Internet, prompting the band and its label, Elektra Records, to abruptly move up the timetable. The tactic is not unprecedented -- album releases by Eminem and 50 Cent have been hurried to stores for the same reason -- but Metallica is an especially tempting target for online music mavens because of the band’s public clashes with Napster and the file-sharing communities.

Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich became the most famous face in the anti-Napster campaigns that came to define the music-for-free controversy. As a result, Metallica and its camp have zealously guarded the “St. Anger” music, the band’s first studio album in six years. At the band’s San Rafael headquarters, all session discs were even labeled with the fictitious band name Green Cup to mask their contents in case they were lost.

In another sign of the digital times, Columbia Records has also moved up the release date of the solo debut by Destiny’s Child member Beyonce Knowles. The album will now be out June 24 instead of July 8, a change that label officials said was made in part to thwart piracy.