In case you haven’t been paying attention, Metallica will be releasing a new album, Hardwired… To Self Destruct, on November 18th. We’ve gotten to hear two songs from it, and we know that if you visit your local indie record store this Monday to pick up a free Metallica mask, you’ll get a download code that will allow you to hear a new song, “Atlas, Rise!,” before anyone else. Granted, it’s only a half hour before everyone else, because they’ll also be putting the song out there on Monday. If you have to work on Halloween, like most of us do, or you don’t want a mask that’s likely something grotesque like the album cover, then you’ll probably just wait an extra half hour and hear it on Metal Insider as soon as it’s out there. But you don’t even have to wait that long to hear a little bit of it, as the band have released a snippet of the song today on their website.

What’s it sound like? Pretty standard Metallica, which isn’t to say that’s a bad thing. It seems a little more like “Moth Into Flame” than “Hardwired,” basically like a turbo-charged track from the Load/Reload era or a more commercial track from Death Magnetic. Of course we’re just judging it on what we heard, so we’ll weigh in with our full opinion once we’ve had a chance to digest it.