While we’ve spoken about why they don’t need to, Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett has given an interview to heavymetal.about.com where he confirms that Metallica are in the studio working on another album. That being said, there’s no timetable as to when the next album will come out, and the interviewer Chad Bower even phrases the question by stating that the band doesn’t have to record new albums. Hammett responds by saying the band’s working at their own pace (which we would classify as “glacial”) and are recording songs now:
Metallica are at the point in your career where you don’t have to record new albums. You’re able to do it when you want and how you want. As an artist, is that freeing?
Absolutely. One always wants to work at the pace that they’re most comfortable at. It’s been about, what, seven or eight years since our last album? It doesn’t feel like that to me, but I know it is. Our first three albums came out our first three years, and for some reason that boggles my mind nowadays. Back then, it was just what everyone did. New year, new album and tour.Even a generation before that it was every six months a new album and tour. So, having said all that, taking seven or eight years between albums is a lot of time, but we’ve filled it up with other things, like making a movie, making an album with Lou Reed, going on tour pretty regularly.
Let me just say that I’m grateful that we’re at a point where we can put out an album at our own pace, because there’s just so much other stuff that takes up Metallica time that’s maybe not as equally as important, but just as relevant.
So, the answer to your question is yeah, it’s great being able to work at your own pace, and still be able to be a father and be a husband, and everything else that comes in the wake of that. We have songs, and we are recording them, so that’s a good sign.
Also possibly on the horizon for Hammett is making his own horror movie. That’s not too much of a revelation, given that the guitarist has had his own horror festival, the Fear FestEvil, for the last two years. He says that if he were to make a horror movie, it would be more serious and believable than many other current scary flicks. However, unlike Through the Never and Some Kind of Monster, he’s not going to foot the bill this time:
I definitely want to make a horror movie. I just have to find someone to pay for it. I have learned through making Some Kind of Monster and Through the Never with Metallica that movies are expensive. I think the most expensive thing you can ever get into is making movies, and that’s why a lot of times people find other people to pay for their movies, because it’s f–king expensive.
I’d love to make a movie if someone else paid for it. I don’t want to have to finance another movie again. We’ve already financed two. I didn’t know the ins and outs of that, the ups and downs, the pros and cons. I would go more the Hollywood route, which is find an investor to invest in the movie and pay for it. Besides, the type of movie I want to make would probably be a period piece, and then probably be upwards of twenty to twenty-five million dollars, and that’s a figure that is for the experts, for the big boys.
