Rolling Stone recently caught up with Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett and drummer Lars Ulrich for an update on the metal giant’s long awaited new album. A couple of excerpts from the chat can be found below.
Last month, Hammett admitted Metallica had, “run out of excuses” to postpone making the album any longer. However, in the new interview with Rolling Stone, Hammett said the band had not yet entered the studio: “We’ve jammed on certain bits and pieces of music and figured out this piece of music works, this works, this doesn’t,” he said. “But we’re still going through that process.”
Hammett explained that the band had over 1000 riffs to sift through: “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.”
Neither Hammett nor Ulrich were willing to speculate on a possible release date: “What I can say is, we’re one day closer to the next record being released than we were yesterday,” Ulrich said. “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.”
Fortunately, fans will get to hear one new song when Metallica embark on their upcoming ‘Metallica by Request’ tour. The band has asked ticket holders in South America and Europe to pick 17 songs on their set list and has reserved the 18th spot for the new song, which will premiere in Bogotá, Colombia, on March 16th.
Pressed for a song title, Ulrich scoffed. “Are you kidding me? 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 f**k with that.”
Metallica last album, ‘Death Magnetic,’ was released in 2008, while their collaboration with the late Lou Reed, ‘Lulu’ was released in 2011.