From antimusic.com:

Metallica celebrated their 30th birthday last week with a star-studded celebration in San Francisco but they have now given their fans a birthday present with the release of a new EP.
The band's official site had these details: Last week we celebrated our 30th anniversary together with Fan Club members from around the world by playing four nights at the historic Fillmore in San Francisco . . . it was quite the bash each and every night! If you were able to join us at any or all of the parties, thanks for coming out to hang with us. And whether or not you were there, you may have heard that we added some unreleased tracks from the Death Magnetic sessions to the set list – one "new" song each night as part of the shenanigans on stage.

This week, we're releasing those four tracks through iTunes exclusively in North America and on iTunes and additional digital retailers in other parts of the world as the Beyond Magnetic EP. All four studio versions of these songs were sent to Met Club members for free immediately following their live debut on stage at the Fillmore and [they are now] available to everyone via the magic of digital downloading. They are the rough mixes, unfinished to their original degree of mixing from March of 2008, and those of you with very keen senses of sound might recognize bits and pieces from the 'Mission Metallica' videos posted in the summer of 2008.

Thanks again to everyone who visited us in San Francisco. As Lars mentioned at the end of the last show, we'll be back here in January with an announcement about a special interactive fan event in June of 2012 . . . we may ask you to do a little traveling again!

Beyond Magnetic Tracklisting:
1. Hate Train
2. Just A Bullet Away
3. Hell And Back
4. Rebel Of Babylon

iTunes North America:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSt ... =485472347

iTunes Mexico: http://itunes.apple.com/mx/album/beyond ... d487495053

iTunes Worldwide: http://smarturl.it/beyondmagneticep

No interest if it remains digital-only. Though I would take it for free from Amazon downloads with the credit I have there.

Agreed. That was a great album and I'd like to hear the tracks, but I'm not buying any digital music.

It was a great album, and I think I'm going to grab these four tracks. It's going to be a LONG time before we have a new Metallica studio album.

Steve:
If you do, let us know how the songs are and how they sound (I wonder if they'll be as compressed as Death Magnetic itself was, though that didn't really bother me).

I wonder if these "rough mixes" will sound better than the Death Magnetic CD?

Have to admit that Death Magnetic did little for me outside of a few tracks (namely That Was Just Your Life, Broken Beat & Scarred, The Judas Kiss). I'm sure some of that had to do with whatever disaster occured during the mix/mastering process.

Very nice-this will be getting a CD release after all in late Januray and I will be on board for it. Smart move by both Warner and Metallica. The digital version made the Top 40 which was rather impressive, so they must've thought more $$$ can be had with a physical release.

From musictap:

Warner Brothers will re-release Beyond Magnetic by Metallica on CD on January 31 after its DD release on December 13. Beyond Magnetic is a 4-track EP that features four tracks recorded during the Death Magnetic sessions. The lengthy songs are “Hate Train”, “Just A Bullet Away”, “Hell and Back”, and “Rebel of Babylon”.

Good to know. Thanks

Metallica will release their four-track Beyond Magnetic EP as a physical edition at the end of January, after the album was made available via digital retailers last month.

The four songs are rough mixes of leftover songs from the Death Magnetic recording sessions of 2007 and 2008. Each of the songs was performed live during Metallica’s four-night 30th anniversary stint in San Francisco in December, then released to the band’s fan club members that evening.

The four songs are “Hate Train,” “Just a Bullet Away,” “Hell and Back” and “Rebel of Babylon.” They were the only four leftover songs from the sessions. “We kept them in the vault and decided to pull them just for this special celebration, so here are the four leftover tracks from the Death Magnetic sessions,” the band said. “They are ROUGH mixes, unfinished to their original degree of mixing from March ’08.”

The digital release of Beyond Magnetic sold around 36,000 copies in its first week, reaching #32 on the Billboard charts. Beyond Magnetic will be released on CD on January 31 in North America and January 30 in the rest of the world.

Just gotta say how incredible these songs are. Extremely heavy, long, progressive songs with great chunky riffs and time changes and James Hetfield sounds awesome. I'm not the hugest Kirk Hammett fan, but his solos are really on the money.
"Just A Bullet Away" is so amazing. All 4 of these songs are gems. The production/mix is the same as 2008's Death Magnetic so be prepared (I still love that album and even though the sound is obnoxious I don't mind), but this was well, well worth the $4.99!