THIS IS PROBABLY NOT A NEW METALLICA SONG

Update, 12:40 pm: Mystery solved! It’s Evile’s “In Memoriam,” not a new Metallica song at all. Congrats to Evile for sounding exactly like Metallica! My apologies for not being more familiar with the rethrash outfit’s catalog. Thanks to Randal for sending us the answer via Twitter. Original story follows after the jump.

Several readers have now e-mailed us a link to the below, which purports to be a new, leaked Metallica song called “Darkness,” and I gotta say… it’s actually fairly convincing. The music and silly lyrics definitely scream “latter-day Metallica,” and for large portions of the song, the vocals even sound an awful lot like James Hetfield. But  then there are other parts of the song where I think the singer is definitely not James Hetfield.

But who knows? The band did enter the studio last month to begin recording their new album, so I suppose it’s feasible that this is a demo or something. But I’d take this with the teensiest tiniest most microscopic grain of salt for now.

Listen below, then speculate as to whether or not it’s just a great forgery in the comments section. I imagine the answer will present itself sometime in the next twenty-four hours, when the Metallicattorneys either have it yanked down or choose to ignore it.

-AR