With Metallica Through the Never now out on home video, Metallica can turn to the next thing on their plate, which is recording the follow up to 2008’s Death Magnetic. And while they’ve made it seem like they’re getting down to business in earlier interviews, the band told Rolling Stone that they haven’t even really begun work on their 10th studio album yet (no, we’re not counting Lulu), guitarist Kirk Hammett says that they’re still in the process of assembling the 1,200 pieces of music they’ve written into songs.
“We’ve jammed on certain bits and pieces of music and figured out this piece of music works, this works, this doesn’t,” Hammett says. “But we’re still going through that process. James [Hetfield] has 800 pieces of music. I have 400 pieces of music. Once we figure out what pieces of music are actually gonna work for us, then we’re going to start turning those pieces of music into songs and seeing where that leads us.”
“What I can say is, we’re one day closer to the next record being released than we were yesterday,” drummer Lars Ulrich adds. “Unless there’s what’s called an ‘Act of God,’ I would hedge my bets that ‘201’ would be the first three digits in the release year. And I don’t know much beyond that. We’ve been jamming along. We’ve been putting in some time.”
Hammett doesn’t really give any updates on what the new material will sound like, either, saying that it usually takes until they have five or six songs down before they can say what direction the album will go in. And while the band have committed to playing a new song on their forthcoming European tour, there’s no word on what the song is called, or even if it’s been written yet.
Pressed for a song title, Ulrich scoffs. “Are you kidding me?” he says. “That’s six weeks from now. We played two new songs on the 2006 tour, right when we were writing and getting ready to record Death Magnetic. At those gigs, they were very, very eloquently entitled ‘New Song 1’ and ‘New Song 2.’ You can’t fuck with that.“
In addition to talking about new material, Kirk Hammett spoke about this weekend’s Kirk Von Hammett’s Fear FestEvil that he’ll be holding at the Regency Ballroom. While we’ve known he’ll be jamming with Death Angel and Exodus, he told RS what songs were on his wish list to play. “I would love to play ‘Kill as One’ with them, he said, referring to Death Angel. “It’s one of my favorite songs from back then.” And while he played “Whipping Queen” and “Impaler” with Exodus in 2012, he plays it close to the vest about what he’ll be playing with them this time, promising one song from one of their first two albums and at least one cover.
You can read the whole interview here.
