With a new album scheduled for release later this year, Metallica are now making plans for 2017. Not so surprisingly, they include a massive tour in support of the upcoming record.

Hardwired … to Self-Destruct, the band's first album since 2008's Death Magnetic, is due Nov. 18, and is scheduled to be a double record with nearly 80 minutes of music. The first song, "Hardwired," was released last week.

Metallica's last arena tour of the States followed the release of Death Magnetic, so the band is preparing to hit the road sometime next year. As drummer Lars Ulrich told Rolling Stone, "It's time to come back and do some proper penetration of America."

"We did 180 shows on the Death Magnetic tour in two-week periods over three years," Ulrich said. "That's what works for us. We're going to start pretty much full-on touring in January and are looking to figure out what we're doing in North America, but there will definitely be some pretty extensive touring in America."

Metallica have played some shows since their 2009 tour, but nothing extensive. They even recently performed a concert in Minneapolis over the weekend to help open the city's new stadium, where they played "Hardwired" live for the very first time. Fans can expect to hear that song, which was an encore at Saturday's concert, as well as many other from the new album next year.

"We're itching to play them," Ulrich said. "Right now, every day when we get into the Tuning Room, we're just playing the new songs. ... Some of the songs from the new record are a little more physical. It's gonna be a lot of fun to play this. Also, some of these songs are a little shorter than the ones on Death Magnetic. I think it's gonna be a lot of fun to throw many of these songs in, but we'll change the set list every night like we always do."

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