For a band like Metallica, making a new record seems like more of a purely artist journey than it does a business venture. Metallica doesn't need to make new records. Metallica could've stopped at Reload and just played its catalog live forever and made infinite money. That, or just sell Metallica/The Black Album to a billion people per week, because somehow people are still buying it in huge quantities weekly. Yet it seems like Metallica enjoys making new music, so why not?
In an interview with 104.9 The Wolf, bassist Robert Trujillo explains why it took eight years between Death Magnetic and Hardwired… To Self Destruct. It's all super understandable reasons, between having kids and exploring different artistic avenues, but ultimately Trujillo says he doesn't want to wait another eight years.
"I personally won't let it be eight years. You know, between St. Anger and Death Magnetic, we had, if I'm not mistaken, five kids born. And, of course, that would allow things to take time. And then, with this eight-year cycle, we had done a film called Through The Never, we made an album with Lou Reed, which was very important and special to us. We also did some interesting tour cycles. We played the 'black' album in its entirety, we actually played a song called 'Frayed Ends Of Sanity' last summer off the Justice album, which seemed like an impossible task for the longest time. And we hit it, we attacked it. So where we're at, at our age, in our careers, I like the fact that we are challenging ourselves, and, to me, that makes for a better album. And all those complaints about, 'It took so long. We've been waiting. Finally! Finally!' It's, like, it did take a long time, but at least we got this and this and this done, got it out of our system, and that has made this album, I feel, better and special, and now, yeah, you don't have to wait so long. We're getting better."
Here's hoping Kirk doesn't lose his damn phone again.
