Yes, this is the third Metallica story we've written today, but damn it, when the biggest metal band on the planet announces their first new album in eight years and releases a single from it, it makes news.
Clearly, the fine folks at Rolling Stone agree, as they got Lars on the phone to hammer out some questions about the new album. The entire interview is worth a read but here are the highlights.
Lars revealed that while the record already has a release date, they are not done with it yet:
"Rob [Trujillo] is still downstairs right now redoing the bass and one of the verses on one of the songs," Ulrich says. "People go, 'What do you think of the record?' And I don't even know because it's not even done yet. It's been kind of a mindfuck this whole week."
He later noted that they should be done mixing the album this weekend. While Lars mentioned most of the songs were written in late 2014, early 2015, he revealed the single, "Hardwired" was the last song they wrote:
A couple of months ago, we were sitting there taking stock of the record and thought maybe we should write one more fast, little crazy song, and that became "Hardwired." It just kind of happened. I think James [Hetfield] and I wrote and recorded it in less than a week, which, for us, is basically a nanosecond [laughs].
Lars also mentions that Kill 'Em All inspired the new album:
We did play Kill 'Em All in its entirety at the Orion festival in Detroit in 2013. That was the first time I really got into that record. Early on, I was dismissive of that record because Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets may be a little more intellectually stimulating and challenging – they were deeper records – and it wasn't until 2013 when we played it that I realized Kill 'Em All had a cohesiveness. It had its own thing with the speed, but it's simpler – the songs are longer but not quite as progressive. It's a world all its own. And I think there are some elements of that that rubbed off into this. I'd say there's a trace of residue from rediscovering Kill 'Em All that crept into the songwriting.
The entire interview is worth a read over at Rolling Stone.
