Metallica Post Cryptic ‘Black Album 2021′ Teaser on Social Media

Metallica are teasing something along the lines of “Black Album 2021” on social media.

All of you sleuths out there — it’s time to get to work.

The cryptic message was written in the caption of an Instagram post, which was a clip of them playing “Wherever I May Roam” during a San Diego concert in 1992. “And the road becomes my bride…” the caption reads, which is topped off with two hashtags of the phrases “flashback Friday” and “Black Album 2021?”

Someone on the Metallica reddit actually posted a screenshot of the Instagram video, which also had the hashtag, “coming this fall” at the very bottom. The band apparently removed that hashtag from the caption, because people in the comments also wrote “coming this fall.”

See Metallica’s post, as well as the screenshot from Reddit, below.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of The Black Album, which was initially released on Aug. 12, 1991. Some of Metallica’s Instagram followers have speculated that the “fall” hashtag was alluding to some sort of box set to commemorate the anniversary of the album, while others are curious whether it means they are releasing a whole new album in general.

A new Metallica record would be their first release since 2016’s Hardwired… to Self-Destruct. We do know that the band wrote 10 songs during the COVID-19 lockdown, however, Lars Ulrich admitted earlier this year that their progress on the new album has been very slow — “glacial” is the exact term he used.