Kirk Hammett says he has 767 new riffs for Metallica’s next album: “It is such a nightmare going through this stuff”
Kirk Hammett has no shortage of riffs — 767 of them, to be exact. The Metallica guitarist recently revealed that he’s sitting on a mountain of new ideas for the band’s next album, so many, in fact, that even he finds it overwhelming.
Appearing on the latest episode of the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, Hammett says that the band will likely not start work on a new album “for at least another year” – but it definitely won’t be for lack of material.
READ MORE: “We were all basket cases!”: Kirk Hammett says he was just as “ornery” and difficult as James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich in Metallica’s early days
“Let me see how many riffs I have at this point [for the next Metallica album],” Hammett begins [via Blabbermouth]. “Okay. Oh, man. All recordings – 767. New ones. New ones, bro. Oh God. It is such a nightmare going through this stuff, too. I can’t do it. And I’m the one responsible for all of it, and I can’t do it.”
According to Hammett, the band won’t be diving into new material until their ongoing 72 Seasons tour fully wraps up.
“When we have a band meeting, and it’s usually Lars [Ulrich] who says the line, ‘Okay, boys, time to create the riff bank,’ that’s when we all step up,” he explains.
“But I don’t foresee that happening for at least another year, ‘cause we’re still finishing the 72 Seasons tour. And once we fully finish this and go to all the outlying places like Asia and Australia and New Zealand, whatnot, I think we’re gonna take a little bit of a break – not too much of one – and then we’re gonna get right back into it. Hopefully – that’s what I see.”
When asked about the possibility of revisiting the band’s ’90s sound for the new record, Hammett replies, “Yeah, who knows? We might just say, ‘Okay, let’s go back to the ‘90s again.’ It’s not a bad idea. We haven’t said that to each other yet. And it’s interesting because when Load and Reload came out, there was a lot of derision, there was a lot of backlash. It was too much change.”
Thankfully, time has been kind to those albums: “It’s interesting,” says Hammett, “‘cause nowadays I run into fans and they love that era.”
Elsewhere in the chat, the musician discusses his songwriting process, noting that he prefers to let ideas ‘come to him’ and not overthink things.
“I’ve found over the years that the stuff I don’t think about is usually the best stuff, because it just comes to me, and if it just comes to me in a natural way, there’s kind of like an organic sort of feel to it,” Hammett explains. “And so that’s how I come up with everything these days. I just sit there with my guitar and see what happens. I refuse to work hard on anything.”
“I mean by ‘working hard’, just like analysing it and trying to see, ‘Oh, if I change this note’ and ‘this has to work with this’ – it feels like I’m doing algebra after a while. I don’t want it. I failed algebra two years in a row. I’m not gonna fucking wanna do algebra when it comes to music.”
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