Metallica‘s Rob Trujillo has given fans a further update after the band confirmed they had been working on recording sessions during lockdown.

In a new interview with The Vinyl Guide podcast , Trujillo said that the band were in touch on a weekly basis to share ideas and updates on what they’ve been crafting in their own home studios.

“We communicate every week, which is really great, so we have our connection intact. And what we’ve started doing is basically just really concentrating on our home studios and being creative from our homes and navigating through ideas and building on new ideas,” he said.

“We’re excited about cultivating new ideas, to be honest. And everybody’s in a good headspace, for the most part, and that’s pretty much our focus now — let’s have fun with this. That’s part of the reason I got some updated recording gear and I’m putting ideas together and we’re checking kind of each other’s vibes out on new stuff. And that’s pretty much where we’re at.”

He went on: “We’re creating, and I think that is really cool, because sometimes it takes a while to get the band together, and get four individuals who are living in different places in the same room. But it’s, like, ‘Hey, guess what? We don’t have to be in the same room right now.’ We can make music from our homes and work together and build stuff – and then we’ll get in that room together and we’ll bang the stuff out, but we’ll be 40 steps ahead.”

Trujillo added that there’s no release date just yet as the band are “cultivating the terrain and getting kind of excited about it.” He also explained that they’re planning to “restructure their routines and their creative flow” before the new ideas transform into full songs.

The update comes after Lars Ulrich said that there was “a very good chance” the band would utilise their extra downtime to produce a “quarantine record”, which would follow on from 2016’s ‘Hardwired… To Self Destruct’.

Speaking to Swedish talk show host Fredrik Skavlan, Ulrich explained that Metallica had been “exchanging some ideas” over Zoom of late.

“So far, at least the sonic side of it and the practical elements are in surprisingly good shape, actually,” he said. “So now we’ve just gotta figure out how much we can create without being in the same space.”

Earlier this week, Metallica fans also voted for the band’s greatest song.