In just three days, Metallica’s long-awaited Hardwired… To Self Destruct, will be in stores. What led to the eight-year wait? Well, plenty of things, but one of the worst setbacks occurred relatively early in putting together the album when Kirk Hammett lost his iPhone. That would probably be a relatively normal occurrence, because who hasn’t done that at least once. However, the guitarist had 250 ideas for songs on his phone, and it wasn’t backed up. He’s obviously learned his lesson, but in an interview with Metal Hammer, he says that that translated to a lot less of his ideas being heard on Hardwired, and a lot more of James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich’s. Telling the magazine that he felt excluded, he says:
“For me, being in this band, I always want to contribute. I always have a lot of musical concepts and ideas to bring to the table. Obviously, that was not meant to be this time, and I had to accept that fact. So I focused on my solos, just making sure that my playing on the album was at its best – at its full potential. Hopefully I can bring my ideas to the next Metallica album. I just hope it’s not another eight years.”
Well, sure. All they have to do is not put out a film or have their own festival for two years. Bassist Robert Trujillo echoed that it was pretty much Lars’ vision and he looked to Hetfield a lot more to put the album together. Meanwhile, Hammett never recovered his phone, so maybe some band somewhere is going to put together an amazing-sounding record that sounds suspiciously like Metallica.
