Metallica keep lid on piracy with tight security and release date switch.

Retailers are being told by Universal Music that they can begin selling the new Metallica album St Anger this Thursday, four days ahead of its previously scheduled release.

Retailers were informed last week of the change in plan to move to a global release date of June 5.

In a statement issued late last Friday, Mercury UK said the major wished "to make the album available to all the band's fans worldwide simultaneously", but it is understood that it is also keen to minimise imports and online leaks.

The move comes as Metallica appear to have successfully beaten the threat of pre-release internet piracy to the album, which has shipped 1.2m units outside of Japan and North America. The set-up of the album provides something of a benchmark for the recorded music industry in battling potentially devastating internet leaks.

Speaking to Music Week last Thursday, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich said, "Who could have guessed that we would be here 12 days before the release of the album with no internet leaks apart from the single, which is already out there?"

Although popular peer-to-peer sites such as KaZaA appear to allow access to the entire album, most of the files posing as tracks from St Anger are in fact dummy "spoilers".

In addition, online experts say the band have used advanced software that seeks out rogue files and identifies users and their internet service providers. "The software can be quite expensive--in the region of 20,000 [pounds sterling] to 30,000 [pounds sterling]--but for a Metallica album: global campaign band like Metallica it could potentially save them millions in terms of lost ...