KIRK HAMMETT: It 'Would Be Nice' If METALLICA Could Take Less Than Eight Years To Release Next Album

Kirk Hammett says that it "would be nice" if METALLICA could take less than eight years to release the follow-up to the "Hardwired… To Self-Destruct" album.

Aside from touring, METALLICA had spent much of time between the release of 2008's "Death Magnetic" and 2016's "Hardwired" on other projects, including launching a music festival, collaborating on an album with the late Lou Reed and making a feature film.

Asked by Donny Fandango of 105.7 The Point radio station before METALLICA's June 4 concert at Busch Stadium in Saint Louis, Missouri if he thinks it's possible that the band will release the next studio album before another eight years have passed, Hammett said (see video below): "That would be nice. I don't believe we've done something like that since, I guess, around the 'Load', 'Reload', 'Garage Days Re-Revisited', 'S&M' kind of period where there was just like a real concentrated period of output. It'd be nice to get to that, because we were still kind of actively touring behind an album, but we had these other things coming in too that kind of changed the tone of the tour that we were on and introduced other cool different songs and different factors. Like when the 'S&M' thing came out, we were, all of a sudden, playing with a symphony, which was quite a different thing. So if we could do something like that, it would be great, but this is a really big machine and sometimes it takes time to steer it this way or steer it that way in terms of pure inertia. It's an effort."

"Hardwired… To Self-Destruct" was certified platinum on April 12 by the RIAA (Recording Association Of America). The platinum certification reflects a million equivalent album units, which blends traditional album sales, tracks sold from an album and on-demand audio and video streams.

The recent gain in "Hardwired… To Self-Destruct" sales is owed mostly to a concert ticket/album bundle sale redemption promotion with the band's stadium tour that went on sale on February 17. Redemptions of albums included with the purchase of a concert ticket register as a sale in the week the customer redeems/receives the album.

"Hardwired… To Self-Destruct" debuted as expected at No. 1 on The Billboard 200 album chart last November, selling 291,000 copies in its first week of release. Both of the band's previous outings, 2008's "Death Magnetic" and 2003's "St. Anger", sold more copies in shortened sales weeks. "Death Magnetic" moved 490,000 copies in a three-day window, while "St. Anger" shifted 418,000 copies in a similar frame.

"Hardwired... To Self-Destruct" consists of two discs, containing a dozen songs and nearly 80 minutes of music.

The North American leg of METALLICA's "WorldWired" 2017 tour kicked off on May 10 in Baltimore, Maryland and is hitting stadiums in 25 cities before winding down in mid-August. Support on the quartet's first North American trek since 2009 is coming mainly from AVENGED SEVENFOLD and VOLBEAT, with GOJIRA taking over for the latter group for the last six shows.