Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Kirk Hammett confirmed that he already has material written for Metallica’s next album. The guitarist currently has 767 riffs for the effort.

Hammett said the following:

“I have 767 new ones for the next album. It is such a nightmare going through this stuff, too. And I’m the one responsible for all of it and I can’t do it…. I don’t foresee us starting the next album for at least another year because we’re still finishing the tour. Once we fully finish this and go to all the outlying places like Asia and Australia and New Zealand, 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.”

He went on to discuss his plans for a solo album:

“I’m just actively getting ideas together for my [first] solo album. I guess the best way to describe it is it’s gonna be a fusion of all sorts of styles…. All of a sudden I’m writing classical progressions, and all of a sudden I’m writing more heavy stuff and all of a sudden I’m writing like a funk thing…. There will be vocals because the songs that I wrote scream for vocals this time around.

So I’m like, okay, who’s gonna be doing the vocals? I don’t know. I hope I’m not—I already have too much to do on stage… I have an instrumental piece that to me sounds like it’s 2000 years old called ‘The Mysterion.’ It’s based on all this stuff that I’ve been reading, the ancient Greek texts, and it’s amazing to me because I wouldn’t have had this instrumental if I didn’t start reading these ancient texts.”

Hammett also discussed the possibility of revisiting Metallica’s 90s material:

“Who knows? We might just say, ‘Okay, let’s go back to the Nineties 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 backlash. But nowadays I run into fans and they love that era. We play ‘Fuel’ and people go nuts. We play ‘Until It Sleeps’ and people know every word.

It’s kind of like how when I was a teenager, I listened to all the Zeppelin albums except ‘Zeppelin III‘ because it was more acoustic and I just wanted the high-energy aggressive stuff. But over time I really came to embrace ‘Zeppelin III‘ and how wonderful it is.”