Metallica to release Bataclan live album for attack victims

NEW YORK — Heavy metal giants Metallica on Wednesday announced a live album recorded at the Bataclan in Paris, with proceeds going to victims of the November 13 attacks at the club.

The CD — entitled, in reference to France’s national motto, “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, Metallica! – Live at Le Bataclan. Paris, France – June 11th, 2003” — will come out on April 16 for Record Store Day, a growing annual event that promotes independent music stores.

The album features a recording of nine songs performed at the Bataclan by Metallica, who had played three gigs in Paris in one night at clubs much smaller than the band was accustomed to as part of a promotion for its album “St. Anger.”

Metallica said all profits from the album would go to Give for France, an initiative under the Fondation de France philanthropic group that raises funds for survivors and families of people who lost their lives in the tragedy.

Ninety people were killed on November 13 when Islamist extremists opened fire at a Bataclan concert of California rockers Eagles of Death Metal, the deadliest of a series of coordinated attacks around the French capital.

Organizers of Record Store Day, a US-based initiative that has gone global and is known as “Disquaire Day” in France, said they planned to highlight the connections between US and French “music-loving humans” for the 2016 edition.

While Metallica’s live album will be out on CD, Record Store Day has largely tried to highlight the resurgence of vinyl, with many bands releasing special records to be sold at independent stores for the occasion.

Metallica — named 2016 Record Store Day “ambassadors” — also plans to put out boxed set reissues of the band’s 1983 debut album “Kill ‘Em All” and follow-up “Ride the Lightning.”

The boxed sets will each include vinyl, CDs, a DVD and a hardcover book from the band, considered the pioneers of the dark and aggressive subgenre of thrash metal.

Lars Ulrich, 52, the California-based band’s Danish-born drummer, said he spent his formative years browsing records at the Bristol Music Center in Copenhagen.

“As music becomes available either through only the Internet or in gigantic airport-size retail stores, it is more important than ever — actually vital — that all us fanatics continue to bring to light the importance of records, and to support to the maximum of our abilities the independent record store outlet,” he said.

Metallica has said it will release a new album this year or early next, the band’s first since 2008’s “Death Magnetic.”