announced Bob Rock would not be producing

In February 2006 Metallica dropped a bombshell on their website – after 15 long years of working with him, they were done with producer Bob Rock. It was time for a change – & they decided to team up with Rick Rubin for their next album. Unfortunately, at the same time, a pretty sizeable petition (1,500 fans signed it) got posted online calling for Metallica to give Rock the boot as producer arguing that he’d been too much of a force behind the band’s overall sound . Rock himself claimed the petition had left his kids feeling pretty down, & he put it this way – “even when you’ve got a great coach, the team still ends up losing games ; you need to bring in some fresh faces, get new blood in”